Charles Hugh Alison

Charles Hugh Alison was a golf course architect, born on March 5, 1883 at Preston in Lancashire, England. He went from Malvern College to New College, Oxford, where he played golf in the match against Cambridge, and he left the university without taking a degree. He was a fine all-round sportsman: between 1902 and 1905 he played first-class cricket for Somerset. In both world wars he served on codebreaking duties.

His way into design was as Harry Colt’s first assistant. Under Colt he took charge of such British work as Northamptonshire County (1909), St George’s Hill (1912) and Camberley Heath (1913), and in time the two became equal partners. For a period they practised as Colt, MacKenzie & Alison, together with Alister MacKenzie, who had come to design in the first place through asking Colt for advice. In 1920 he published Some Essays on Golf-Course Architecture with Colt. In 1928 he founded Colt, Alison & Morrison Ltd. with Colt and John Morrison, and in 1929 his name stood among the founding members of the International Society of Golf Architects. He had a good deal of work in North America as well, of which Century Country Club in New York State (1927) and Milwaukee Country Club in Wisconsin (1929) are the best known.

What sets Alison’s name apart in the golf history of Japan is the visit he made there in 1930 and 1931. Tokyo Golf Club had asked for Colt, who declined the journey on account of his age, and Alison crossed the sea in his place, arriving in December 1930 aboard the Asama Maru and staying until late February 1931. In those not quite three months he designed the Asaka course of Tokyo Golf Club and Hirono Golf Club, and drew up remodelling plans for Kasumigaseki Country Club, Ibaraki Country Club and Naruo Golf Club. Hirono opened in 1932. He afterwards left his advice on the Fuji course at Kawana Hotel, which opened in 1936. The construction work on the ground was carried on by George Pengrase, who had travelled out with him.

Of everything Alison left behind in Japan, the best known is a name: the Alison bunker. Deep bunkers with high, scooped-out faces were an unfamiliar sight in the Japan of the day, and the architect’s name stuck to them. But his other work told for far longer on the way courses were thought about in Japan — greens with a great deal of movement in them, and layouts long and demanding by the standards of the time. Late in life, in 1947, he moved to South Africa with his wife and designed Wingate Park (1947) and Bryanston (1949). He died at Cape Town on October 20, 1952, at the age of 69.

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