THE golfer who built one of Oxfordshire’s best-known courses has died at the age of 74.

Keen sports fan Michael McKenna became the captain of Oxford City Golf Club at Southfield in 1993, later serving as its president.

It was this passion for the sport which led to him deciding to build his own course.

Before he remodelled it, Drayton Park Golf Course, south of Abingdon, was a plot of partly flooded disused land.

Once transformed into a golf course it boasted 18 holes, 15 lakes and 15,000 newly-planted trees.

It is now one of Oxfordshire’s best-known courses and is celebrating its 20th anniversary this year.

Aside from his love of golf, Mr McKenna was the founder and director of a major plant hire company.

He began his working life on a farm before building his own business from scratch.

Born in County Monaghan, Ireland, on January 7, 1939, into a farming family, Mr McKenna moved to Noke in Oxfordshire when he was 16, first finding work on a farm and then at the Morris Motors factory in Cowley.

He became a union shop steward, representing his colleagues, aged 21.

While working in a farm near Islip he met Mary McCarthy at a dance in Cowley, and the couple married in 1959, having two children.

He restored and rebuilt a broken-down B100 Drott International digger in his spare time, before hiring it and himself out during the day for construction work, while continuing to work night shifts at Morris Motors.

This one-man operation soon paved the way for the formation of what became known as McKenna Plant Hire (Oxford) in 1964.

Mr McKenna built up the company over the course of 48 years.

A number of the staff who joined Mr McKenna in the firm’s infancy continued to work for him for many years.

The business expanded from plant hire into operating landfill waste sites and he owned several around Oxfordshire, including Woodeaton Quarry, just north of Oxford.

Last year the plant hire company was sold by the McKenna family to Mercia Holdings, but Mr McKenna retained the landfill side of his business, forming a new company called McKenna Environmental.

He remained involved in the running of the company’s operations until very late in his life.

Like his golf course, Mr McKenna’s landfill company will remain in the charge of his family.

Mr McKenna died of cancer on Wednesday, March 27, at Abingdon Community Hospital.

He is survived by his widow Mary, his children, Michael and Diane, and his grandson Michael.

His funeral service was held yesterday at Our Lady and St Edmund of Abingdon Church, in Radley Road.