I.
Racquets & the Lawn
Eight Har-Tru courts, four deco-turf hard courts, three platform courts heated against January, and a six-wicket croquet lawn with its own silver.
Racquets
Keswick, Virginia · Founded 1913
A quieter measure
of the good life.
Six hundred forty acres of Piedmont meadow and oak, one of the last great walking courses in the Commonwealth, and a clubhouse where four generations have taken their supper. Membership is by introduction, and it is for life.
The Club
One hundred and thirteen years, and still unhurried.
The Ridgemont Club was founded in October of 1913 by Hartwell Ashcombe Whitfield, who believed a club should be run the way a good farm is run — patiently, and for the next steward. We have kept his habit.
Today the club counts four hundred eighty-two memberships — a number the Board of Governors has declined to raise since 1987. The Founders Course, laid out by Edmund Calloway in 1914 and restored green by green in 2016, remains walking-only before two o'clock. The Whitfield Dining Room still seats at half past six. The croquet lawn is mown to eleven millimetres each Monday, as it has been since the Coolidge administration.
We are, by disposition, a club that does not announce itself. If you are reading this page, someone who knows you thought you would understand why.
Read the club's history1913
Year Founded
640
Acres in Trust
7,214
Yards, Founders Course
482
Memberships, by Charter
Golf
The Founders Course
Calloway's routing asks for thought before force: a par of 71 over 7,214 yards, greens that run eleven and a half on the Stimpmeter in season, and bunkers placed where a prudent man would rather not be. The Meadow Nine — our par-29 walking loop of 2019 — keeps the evening game alive.
Club Life
A full day, properly spent.
II.
Spa & Wellness
Nine treatment rooms in the old springhouse, a saline lap pool under glass, and a fitness pavilion that opens onto the meadow at six each morning.
Wellness
III.
Dining & Wine
Three dining rooms, a terrace in season, and an 8,400-bottle cellar kept at fifty-five degrees beneath the west wing since 1914.
The table
The Clubhouse
Bertram Ellery Sloane's house of 1914
The clubhouse was drawn by Sloane in the Georgian manner and built of brick fired three miles down the Shadwell road. Its rooms have never been "redone" — only kept. The Whitfield Library holds the minutes of every Board of Governors meeting since the first, in hand-bound calf.
Members keep their own keys. The front door has not been locked in living memory, and the night porter, Mr. Toombs, has held his post for thirty-one years.
“A club is not a thing a man joins. It is a thing his grandchildren are born into, if he has conducted himself properly.” Hartwell A. Whitfield, Founder's Address · October 1913
The Season
What the calendar holds
- May 16 Opening Day & the Whitfield Cup — shotgun at eight, luncheon on the terrace, silver presented at four. Golf · Black tie optional
- Jun 20 Midsummer Croquet Invitational — six-wicket on the main lawn, whites required, Pimm's at the pavilion. Racquets & Lawn · Garden attire
- Jul 4 Independence Day at the pools — field games at ten, fried chicken at noon, fireworks over the lower meadow at dark. Family · Club casual
- Oct 10 The Harvest Ball — the Whitfield Room by candlelight, the Charlottesville Symphony Octet, dancing until one. Gala · Black tie
Membership
An introduction is the beginning.
Membership at Ridgemont is extended by invitation following the sponsorship of two members in good standing. The first step is a conversation — unhurried, and entirely without obligation.