WATCHING the 'birdie' in this 1934 photograph are golfers taking part in a caddies competition, at Pleasington Golf Club.

Sitting in the middle of the front row is the club captain that year, Walter Tempest.

The club is reckoned to have been formed in 1891, by Fred Marwood, even though formal records only date from the following year and it was originally a nine hole course.

By this time Blackburn was blossoming into one of the biggest cotton manufacturing centres in the world, with 120 weaving sheds and Blackburn Rovers had just won its second successive FA Cup.

In an article in the Northern Daily Telegraph 40 years later, Mr Marwood explained how they had chosen derelict meadows as the site for their new course - the playing fields were considered too damp and the hilly land behind Pleasington too arduous.

Although the selected land was in a 'hopeless condition', it's benefit was that it was close to Pleasington Railway Station.

Indeed when the ladies held an opening meeting in 1914, it was stated in the circular that the station was only a three minute walk from the club house - which was, at first, a wooden hut, with a stock of whiskey in stone jars.