History

    The property occupied by the Wellesley Country Club has a history predating the club’s 1910 founding, as the original grant of land to Eleazar Kingsbury of Dedham occurred around 1665. On April 19, 1775, a company of West Needham Minutemen assembled there and, led by Captain Caleb Kingsbury, marched off to engage the British troops in the first battle of the Revolutionary War. In 1828 the town of Needham purchased the property from the Kingsbury family for use as a combined poor farm and town hall. That town hall was the site of the 1880 meeting that resulted in Wellesley’s secession from Needham. The town has placed a granite obelisk at the site in recognition of its role in Wellesley’s history.

    The new town was named in honor of its benefactor, Horatio Hollis Hunnewell, whose wife’s maiden name was Welles and whose mansion on Lake Waban was called “Wellesley”. Hunnewell subsequently donated a new town hall and library to the town. Hunnewell’s estate was also the site of the first golf course in Massachusetts, laid out in 1892.

    Five years later, the town’s second golf course—the Wellesley Hills Golf Club—was constructed about a mile from the site of the present club on Abbott Road. Not satisfied with this rudimentary facility, a number of its members established the Wellesley Country Club in 1910, leasing the land from the town and using the former poor house as the clubhouse. They chose Donald Ross to design the course—his fifth commission after arriving in Massachusetts from Scotland in 1898. While seven of those original holes are still played, none of the Ross greens is in use. In addition to the golf course, the club built tennis and croquet courts. Eleven years after its founding, the club purchased the land and buildings from the town.

    In 1927, the club hired Wayne Stiles, who had already completed his fine work at Taconic, Dedham and Pine Brook, to revise the golf course. Stiles, who lived on Clarke Road near the current seventh tee and was a member of the club’s Greens Committee, also provided plans for an 18 hole course. But negotiations with Babson College—whose land was needed for the expansion—failed. It was not until 1960, when the members voted to purchase land from the Sisters of Charity, that an 18 hole course could be created. Geoffrey Cornish was hired to design the new holes, making Wellesley one of two clubs that have been touched by New England's three most prolific golf course architects: Ross, Stiles and Cornish.

    Expanding the golf course allowed the club to increase its membership from 250 to 525 so the clubhouse was doubled in size to accommodate this increased population. In 1966, additional land was purchased from the Sisters of Charity and Cornish designed four new holes to create the layout that is played today. While the croquet courts are long gone, the number of tennis courts has increased to eight and other facilities have been added: a swimming pool, built in 1953; an indoor tennis facility in 1969; paddle tennis courts in 1977. The last major expansion was the 2008 construction of a new clubhouse.