Since September 1976, St Mellion has grown from a single 18-hole golf course with a modest hotel, conceived and built by Cornish farmers Martin and Hermon Bond, into a vibrant, international-class golf resort with 36 holes of Tour-quality golf and an 80-bedroom 4-Star hotel.
One of European golf’s true giants, the world-famous St Mellion Estate – home to the first Jack Nicklaus Signature golf course in the UK – is celebrating its 50th Anniversary in 2026 with a series of events including golf tournaments, commemorative graphics and a special 50th Anniversary membership.
Dozens of golfers will also be taking up limited-edition 50th Anniversary Signature Memberships at the prestigious venue.
Several county-level golf tournaments are also being hosted by St Mellion in 2026, in honour of its 50th Anniversary, and this year many long-serving staff are also being given the opportunity to speak about their own personal connections to the resort, including Penny Baxter who, after over 40 years working there, is St Mellion’s longest-serving active staff member.
“I started working at St Mellion as a waitress when I was at school, not long after it opened” she said. “It seemed unlikely that two Cornish farmers could turn St Mellion into an international-class golf resort, let alone persuade the Tiger Woods of his day to design one of the golf courses! Yet the Bond brothers pulled it off, and I was lucky to be here to witness almost all of its extraordinary history.”
Penny now coordinates St Mellion’s hundreds of annual conference and business events. “Every year we welcome thousands of people to this beautiful corner of Cornwall. We all feel so much pride at being part of St Mellion. We supply the expertise, and the customers supply the good vibes which keep us going!“
But what is it about St Mellion which inspires such devotion?
Ranked among the Top 25 Golf Resorts in Great Britain & Ireland, and often listed in World Top 100 Golf Resort lists, St Mellion’s illustrious story now spans five decades with golfing legends including Seve Ballesteros, Tom Watson, Lee Trevino and Sir Nick Faldo among the many iconic golfers who have walked its fairways.
“St Mellion will always have a special place in my heart” said Nicklaus, now 86. “The Bond brothers were unwavering in their desire to bring a special golf experience to St Mellion. It was one of the most difficult pieces of property that I have ever worked with, but we were able to create a very, very good golf course there.”
The indefatigable Martin and Hermon Bond flew over to Nicklaus’s Memorial tournament in May 1982, at the height of The Golden Bear’s fame, to attempt to convince him to get involved in building a new 18 holes in a beautiful and dramatic countryside valley which, at first sight, looked as if it might pose a near-impossible challenge to the 18-time Major winner and renowned golf course architect.
But in July 1988, the Nicklaus Signature Course was opened by a stellar fourball – Nicklaus, Watson, Faldo and Sandy Lyle – and since then Jack’s golf course has itself featured regularly in many Top 100 lists over the years.
A book published in 2018, ‘ST MELLION – THE BOND LEGACY’ written by Paddy Flavin and Michael Taylor, is packed with anecdotes about how two Cornish famers created an internationally-acclaimed golf resort deep in the West of England.
Jeff Chapman, Founder of Crown Golf owners Bangarra Group, said: “As proud owners of the stunning and world-famous St Mellion Estate for close to half its lifetime of 50 years, my wife Carena and I have long considered it to be the ‘Jewel in the Crown’. Crown Golf has owned St. Mellion since 2004, accounting for 22 years of the last 50 which we are celebrating this year.
“We applaud the vision of the Bond brothers who collaborated with Jack Nicklaus to design the first-ever Nicklaus course outside of the USA, in the Cornish countryside.”
Chapman continued: “Established on farmland in 1976, the 36-hole St Mellion course, with its Old Course and the newer Jack Nicklaus-designed Signature layout, had established itself as both a tournament venue and a golf resort. But it had dropped off the big-golf radar, with its last European PGA Tour event held in 1995. So in 2006, the Bennelong Group decided to redevelop St Mellion completely, to bring it back to the forefront of European golf.
“But this celebration is about much more than that. It is about the community in which we work, and about the staff who feel a sense of pride and ownership working here at St. Mellion. From the hotel staff to the golf operations team to the greenkeeping team, this story is about the people!
“Most of all, it is about the golfers” said Chapman. “It is about the members who support the club, and it is about the golfers who travel from all over the world to play these magnificent golf courses set in the Cornish countryside.
“We are pleased to be part of this story.”