Services Which Have Changed Direction
This page was first drafted in 2009. Developments referred to may have changed since. Follow the links for the latest information.
As the motorway network has developed and changed, so have many of the motorway service areas that were built to serve it. This page charts some of the most significant changes which have happened.
Those that shrunk
Aust
Perhaps the most iconic of those to be featured on this page, Aust is now better known by its newer name, Severn View. This is where the problems begin.
Severn View suffered probably the biggest and most well-documented fall from grace of any service area, in being moved from a busy and popular location looking over the Severn Estuary to, following a drop in trade, a small shack in the old lorry park. This was always going to be a downwards spiral because, with no-one wanting to go past in the first place, it was going to be hard to attract more people to an increasingly poorer site.
Arguably this is the most painful business disaster to befall a motorway service area, but it is also perhaps the most necessary. It all happened despite a campaign to attract custom to the majestic service area, the sort of thing not seen since the late 1960s.
Leicester Markfield
There are hundreds of buildings across the country which were at some point part of the Little Chef chain. Many of these, like Barnsdale Bar or Sutton Scotney, had large buildings which became surplus to requirements. Most have since been expanded with a new lease of life, but not Markfield.
Despite becoming a Moto branded service area at one stage, the complex at Markfield was closed in stages, and is now abandoned.
Burtonwood
A triumph of optimism over practicality, Burtonwood was regarded as a "commercial flop", and one of Forte's biggest business errors. By the 1990s it was not well used, so Welcome Break put few resources into it.
Eventually the westbound side was finally disposed of and, after being left abandoned for a while, it was eventually demolished. All customers are sent to the eastbound side in a project referred to as "consolidation of facilities". This lit the path for a complete refurbishment which brought significant improvements to the remaining building. The old building is now a business park.
Heart of Scotland (Harthill)
Technically, this one got rebuilt and should be placed under that heading, but what's noteworthy at the catchily-titled "Heart of Scotland (Harthill) services" is that the new complex is much smaller than what was there before, reducing a full service area into a pair of forecourts built over some very large grounds.
While the site is now better-scaled to its custom levels. A bit like Severn View, only here the old building isn't watching over the new from a menacing vantage point.
Those that closed
We used to write at great length about some closed services here, but then we decided to create a whole section for them.
Those that were so good they built them twice
Moto, Cherwell Valley mk. II
Heston and the fires
Numerous service areas have experienced fires, which have resulted in old amenity buildings being replaced with brand new ones. While the circumstances are clearly unfortunate, the new buildings do tend to go down well with customers and be easier to operate.
Heston would be one of the UK's oldest service areas, had the westbound side not experienced a severe fire in the 1981. What makes the complex unusual is that 1998 the eastbound side was rebuilt too. The 1980s building is now looking somewhat old itself, but it remains more effective than the original setup.
Strensham
There are surprisingly few examples of very old motorway service areas being knocked down and rebuilt to offer a better service. Strensham southbound was rebuilt in 2002, turning one of the UK's oldest service area buildings into one of its newest.
Before that, the northbound service area was relocated in 1991. This move was made necessary by the new road layout, but it also allowed the facility to occupy much larger grounds. Strensham northbound is clearly older than the southbound side, with a darker building and more segregated areas, but both sides remain much roomier than the original facilities.