Mungo Park is a golf historian and a retired architect. He graduated from Edinburgh University in 1982. He was a Senior Lecturer in Architecture and Landscape at the City of Birmingham University. Mungo’s book, Musselburgh, The Cradle of Golf focuses on a critical period in the development of golf over the eighteenth, nineteenth and early twentieth century. It highlights the significant place that Musselburgh played above all centres of the game, in the most intensive period of change between 1832 and 1892 and provides extensive profiles of the club and ball makers, artists and writers, that supported and advanced golf at that time.
Mungo has written and spoken extensively on the town’s golf history and the work of his family. This book extends the scope of his research, recognising that the history of golf is much greater than the story of the Park family alone. The book is a more thorough exploration of Musselburgh’s golf history than that displayed in the eight-week exhibition that he curated in 2018 at the Musselburgh Museum, also entitled Musselburgh: Cradle of Golf. This book reaches into the social and physical conditions that surrounded golf in Edinburgh and Musselburgh in the early nineteenth century. Mungo is the great-grandson of Willie Park Snr of Musselburgh, winner of the first Open at Prestwick in 1860, and three others (’63, ’66 and ’75). Willie Snr’s brother Mungo Snr won the Open in 1874; his son Willie Jnr won it in 1887 and 1889. Willie Park Jnr’s career marks the turning point from the caddy/player to the businessman, inventor, entrepreneur and author. He was the first to describe himself as a ‘Golf Architect’ and worked on over 200 courses in Europe and North America, including Sunningdale Old, Huntercombe, Hollinwell, La Boulie, Evian-les-Bains, Mount Bruno and The Maidstone, Long Island. Willie Park Snr and Jnr are members of the World Golf Hall of Fame. Another son of Willie Park Snr was Mungo Park Jnr, the author’s grandfather, who went to Argentina where he repeated his father’s achievements by winning the first Argentine Open, ‘El Abierto’ in 1905 and two others (’07 and ’12). His wife Grace Park won the first Ladies Golf Championship of the River Plate in 1904, now the Argentine Women’s Open. Five Park women were Scottish golf internationals in the early twentieth century. Mungo was instrumental in saving Mrs Forman’s pub from demolition and conversion to garages and in resisting the proposed over-development of the site to the detriment of the historic old links. He has recently been involved in the establishment of a Willie Park Society in the US with a corresponding Society planned in the UK.
These evenings will run as a Q&A format with Learning & Access Curator Hannah Fleming but also opportunity for audience questions. Tickets cost £10. Doors will open from 6.30pm, with the evening beginning at 7pm. There will be tea and coffee availiable upon arrival. Should you have any questions please contact Hannah hannahfleming@randa.org
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