Brocket Hall built an adventure golf course inside Southfield School in Hatfield. A year on, pupils count strokes on scorecards and visit the club itself.
A year ago a golf course was built in the grounds of a Hatfield special school. This month the golf club that put it there went back to play it with the pupils.
The course is at Southfield School on Woods Avenue, Hatfield, AL10 8NN, a specialist school for children with additional needs. It was built through GOLFA, short for Game of Life for All, the community programme run by Brocket Hall Golf and Country Club at Welwyn. Brocket Hall says it is the first adventure golf facility built inside a school specifically to support children with additional needs, and the school makes the same claim on its own website, describing Southfield as the first school in the UK to open an adventure golf course designed around learning and engagement through sport.
Southfield’s headteacher, Angela O’Rourke, said of the partnership: “You have no idea how much this means to our whole community.”
What the anniversary visit involved
The Brocket Hall team returned to the school this month and worked with pupils on the course. Brocket Hall says pupils practised the basics of the game, holding a putter properly, judging distance and controlling the strength of a shot, and used the course to work on teamwork, communication, concentration, decision-making and resilience.
The school’s own account of the visit, published on its website under the title More Than Golf: Brocket Hall Visits Southfield to Develop Skills On and Off the Course, goes further into the detail. It describes pupils taking turns, encouraging one another and waiting while a classmate played, and learning the rules of the game: fair play, respecting others, following instructions. It notes that concentration was needed to line up a shot and that resilience was on show when a shot went wrong and a pupil tried again.
Maths came into it as well. Pupils used scorecards to record their progress, count strokes and compare scores between holes, which the school calls a practical use of numeracy. The school finished its account by saying the facility is helping pupils learn valuable life skills “one putt at a time”.
The traffic goes both ways
The part of this that is easy to miss is the return journey. Over the past year Southfield pupils have also travelled the other way, to Brocket Hall itself, and Brocket Hall says that for some pupils a visit to the club is their only regular trip off the school site. More visits are booked for the 2026/27 school year.
Stu Williams, head of communities at Brocket Hall, set out the thinking behind it:
“When we started GOLFA, we wanted to look at how we could use golf and the resources we have at Brocket Hall to create opportunities for people who might never normally experience them.
“Southfield was a perfect example of that thinking. Rather than expecting every child to come to a golf club, we asked ourselves what we could do to bring golf to them.
“But just as importantly, we wanted to create a pathway in the other direction. The adventure golf course gives children a starting point in an environment they know and feel comfortable in, and then we can welcome them to Brocket Hall and introduce them to the wider world of golf.
“For some of these children, those visits to Brocket Hall are their only opportunity to experience an environment like this outside school. Starting their journey into golf in an inclusive, welcoming and family-friendly setting can be incredibly important to their confidence, development and the opportunities they have later in life.”
He added that the golf is “almost the vehicle”, and that what matters is “the confidence, relationships, resilience, communication and enjoyment that come from taking part”.
What it means for you
If your child is at Southfield, the practical change is that the course is now a fixture rather than a novelty, and the club visits are continuing into a second year. Brocket Hall says the plan is to keep developing both the course at the school and the visits to the club, as a longer-term route into the sport.
If you run a school, charity or community group in Welwyn Hatfield, GOLFA is the part of Brocket Hall to approach. Brocket Hall says the programme works with schools, charities and community organisations, and it has encouraged its own members and staff to take part. The contact given for the programme is Stu Williams, head of communities, at communities@brocket-hall.co.uk.
One thing the announcement does not say is anything about public access. The course is inside a school’s grounds, so treat it as a school facility rather than somewhere to turn up and play. If you are after golf you can simply book, that is a different search, and our guide to things to do in Welwyn Garden City is a better starting point.
Brocket Hall’s account of the year was sent to Welwyn Online by the club on 24 September 2026, along with the photographs on this page. Southfield School’s own write-up of the visit is on the school website.
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