A HAMPSHIRE golf club is closing its doors for the final time tomorrow.

Fairthorne Manor Golf Club, in Botley, is shutting after being hit by a huge decline in membership.

Owner the YMCA Fairthorne Group charity said the club, which opened more than 30 years ago, had been losing money.

The nine-hole golf course, which is part of the Fairthorne Manor estate, was reduced from 18 holes last year, but a decision was made six weeks ago that it was to close.

Director Sally Arscott said that the decision was financial. The course had once been profitable and brought an income to the charity, but now it was having the opposite effect.

“Originally the golf course was a trading subsidiary which would gift aid its profits over to the charity. It was a way of fundraising.

“It’s simply losing money – we’re a charity and we can’t afford to continue to have operations which are losing money.”

The course was created in the early seventies and a club was formed shortly afterwards.

The course was extended in 1994 on land leased from an adjoining land owner and it this land that is currently being used as a course and which will close tomorrow.

Charity The club is owned and run by Fairthorne Manor Recreation Ltd, which is a wholly owned trading subsidiary of the charity YMCA Fairthorne Group.

At its peak, in the 1990s, the club was generating a £50,000 profit – but now it is losing £50,000 a year, said Mrs Arscott.

Membership, which at its peak was around 250 people, has dropped to around 50.

Mrs Arscott said the club, which had always been seen as a “support piece”, had been in gradual decline over the past ten years and the charity had tried to keep it going for as long as it could.

She said golf courses across the country were struggling due to the economic climate and Fairthorne Manor was another victim of that.

The YMCA Fairthorne Group is an independent charity set 11 years ago, but it was originally part of the YMCA and has been based on the Fairthorne Manor site for 60 years.

It is a children and young people’s charity which runs a range of services such as outdoor education programmes and housing and counselling for young people.

Once it closes, the golf course will revert to its original use as a camp site for young people.

Mrs Arscott said she understood it would be sad for those members who loved the golf and had built friendships there.