When Haywards Heath Golf Club opened for business in 1922, a six bedroom house ten minutes walk from the station could be had for £1,700.

Today the property explosion in Mid Sussex has hoisted the price for an equivalent investment to around £200,000.

In almost every respect the golf club has changed out of recognition from the day it was founded by Horace Finch. This prominent local businessman was very much the big cheese running everything from a building company to a funeral parlour.

His shrewdness in giving the town a golf club paid handsome dividends as there was no shortage of locals willing to find six guineas for an annual sub.

The popularity of the club is even greater today and a timely addition to the archives is the Millennium Book, researched and written by Allan Allbeury and Forbes Calder.

The history could also be the story of middle class England between the wars. To some extent it debunks what is often mistakenly regarded as the good old days.

If you had money in the 1920s there was no need to worry. But, as the book records, try looking at life then from the working man's point of view.

Without doubt Frank Packham, for 42 years the club pro, was happy. He was employed doing a job he loved. He cycled to work in his plus-fours seven days a week and had charge of a seven-man team.

In summer he was required to play with members, silently tolerating their irritating foibles and bad temper. It was not unusual for the pro to play three rounds a day in summer and act as stand-in barman and supervise the cleaning of members' clubs with emery paper and spit.

Originally Packham's shop was little more than a shed. He had a small stock of equipment and charged just 37p for a hickory-shafted club. Most members, those with short arms and deep pockets, opted for replacement shafts. But, by comparison, new liquid-core balls were dear at 12p each or half a crown in old money.

Class divisions in a private club such as Haywards Heath were rigid. Members referred to the pro as, Packham; not Mister, or unthinkably, Frank.

Frank Packham was paid a retainer of £2 a week and counted himself lucky. But gradually conditions and terms of employment improved and towards the end of his career the committee set up a modest pension fund and he stayed until the age of 69.

Pros today don't know they are born but that may be said of all aspects of golfing life. The club didn't have a tractor until the 1930s and then it was a converted Fort T4 baker's van, the rear wheels fitted with spikes and a bench seat added to accommodate a co-driver.

Frank's son, Peter, worked for his dad on the course for 72p a week and when called up into the RAF, served as a tail-gun Charlie and counted himself mighty lucky to survive one of the most dangerous jobs in the war. He returned to the club as head greenkeeper, finally leaving to take over the outside staff at the Royal Parks, Richmond.

During the war part of the course was given over to dig-for-victory and restoration work was carried out by German PoWs. Cash problems prompted the launching of an appeal fund and the club was saved by finding a loophole in the Town and Country Planning Act. Then, as now, Haywards Heath have invariably had sharp brains at the top.

Slowly, but surely, the club regained its feet. The clubhouse was re-developed thanks to compulsory loans and an interest free bond scheme. In 1974 it became a members' club, the course was re-designed and continually upgraded.

But how attitudes changed. Just after the war the committee blocked the installation of fruit machines. Forty years later the profit from the one-arm bandit was £18,650.

The number of artisan sections in Sussex golf now can barely be counted on one hand. There was a time when every private club was patron to a working man's club who, in return for greatly reduced fees, worked on the course.

Haywards Heath was no exception and the artisans also acted as caddies. The most prized bag was Lord Denman who, after his clubs were cleaned, paid 15p (3 shillings) a round.

- John Vinicombe