Antique Golf Clubs from Scotland: Clubmakers

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Clubmakers

Bennett Lang
Perth/Montreal/Epping
Bennett Lang was born in Stirling in 1849 to Michael Lang, a hairdresser, and his wife Grace Bennet Patterson and, as it is how it appears in all early statutory records, christened, I believe, Michael Bennet Lang. By the end of 1850, when his brother Robert was born, the family was living in Perth.

Much of what we know about Bennett Lang comes from Peter Baxter’s Golf and Golfing in Perthshire, written in 1899 when Lang was still making clubs in Perth and a friend of Baxter’s. I suggest this rather hampers Baxter’s account as he has to gloss over those activities which might put Mr Lang into the ‘a bit of a lad’ category.

Happy days on the North Inch in Perth with a cleek, according to Baxter, then an apprenticeship with an engineering company in Glasgow where he supposedly met Young Tom Morris while strolling around Alexandra Park. The result was, on the 1871 census, he was back with his family in Perth, an ‘engineer finisher’ and unemployed. It is recounted that the connection with Young Tom took him to St Andrews and a clubmaking apprenticeship with Old Tom Morris. In Baxter’s account, he then spent time working with Jamie Anderson,

‘and then with famous Forgan. He next moved to Musselburgh, where he was with Douglas M'Ewan and Son — a firm, if we mistake not, which claims a continuity since 1740. Shortly after 1880 Lang went to Dunbar, where he was employed with Patrick; then at Alnmouth with Mungo Park; then at Troon with Willie Fernie. Lang came back to Perth, the scene of his boyhood days, in 1888.’

So, he has worked with almost every clubmaker of note and this may essentially be true (though a Patrick connection with Dunbar is a new one on me) but it disregards the time he spent at Malvern, Worcestershire. I do not know how long he was there but in 1887 he was twice before the Police Court while held in jail before being tried at the assizes and sentenced to four months hard labour for stabbing John Newell after a pub quarrel ‘with intent to do him actual bodily harm’ and, according to the surgeon testifying, causing a risk of death.

Perhaps not germane to Baxter’s story but I find it strange that in future census returns, and indeed his death certificate, Bennett Lang is always recorded as single and not as a widower. Yet he married in St Andrews in March 1879, still classified as a journeyman clubmaker, Agnes Rodger, a dressmaker, who was dead the following May.

He served as ‘superintendent of the green’ in Perth until 1892 when he moved to Newcastle in Northern Ireland to be professional at the (Royal) County Down club for the summer season. Thereafter, he had a clubmaking job in North Berwick making the patented clubs of Sir Walter Dalrymple in J H Hutchison’s workshop.

After North Berwick he went to the Royal Montreal club in Canada. This seems to have been a real success for him. The course was brought up to a standard the members were happy with and he apparently did great business in selling his clubs as far west as regular shipments to Vancouver Island in Canada and down to the United States. After three years he was apparently struck down with sciatica and the doctor told him that improvement to his health would only come about with a return to Scotland. Pull the other one. I’m not sure the effect of cold on sciatica was recognised then (it still seems to be under investigation in medical studies) but Perth was a lot colder in those days anyway: the River Tay froze over in 1895 with between 5,000 and 6,000 people on the ice. And surely no physician is going to suggest the damp cold of Scotland has wonderful healing properties. I suspect some scandal brought his time at Montreal to an end.

He returned first to St Andrews as an instructor then went in 1896 as professional at Epping Forest in London.

This lasted only a year and he was soon back in Perth and in trouble again. He took over the lease of Willie Watt’s clubmaking business in the North Port as Watt found it more convenient to be closer to the Moncreiffe Island golfers from premises in Tay Street. In February 1898 he was before the Police Court for having bypassed the meter with the gas pipe and ‘stealing’ 800 cubic meters of gas. He was found guilty and fined.

However he acquired his skills, he was a fine clubmaker with a particular skill in copying clubs. Baxter’s piece on him describes how, at the time of visiting, he ‘was busy copying an old Philp baffy for a well-known Perthshire gentleman’ and notes, ‘if there is one club Lang is more partial to than another it is a sweet, well-loaded wooden putter’. Georgiady writes, ‘his integrity would not allow him to create a forgery of an old Philp although it was known he produced many a copy of old Hugh Philp heads’. Another version related to me was ‘he made many very fine wooden putters and some even had his name on them rather than Philp’s’.

He died in Perth Royal Infirmary on 4 May 1913 as a result of a cerebral haemorrhage.

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