Guide to Grantham North services

Grantham redirects here. For Grantham South, see Colsterworth.

Moto own this small facility at the Gonerby Moor junction.

Facilities

Catering: Burger King, Costa Coffee, Greggs, KFC, Costa Express, f'real Milkshakes, Krispy Kreme Shops: WHSmith Amenities: Travelodge, Changing Places, Full Hou$e, Showers Outdoor Space: Small grass space at back of car park and next to hotel Charging Points: GRIDSERVE Electric Highway HPC 350kW CCS, 100kW CHAdeMO & 22kW Type 2; Tesla Supercharger 150kW CCS Forecourt: BP, Shop, Costa Express

Parking Prices

First 2 hours free for all vehicles, after which cars must pay £15 and HGVs, caravans and motorhomes £25. HGVs can pay £28 to include a £10 food voucher.

Prices are paid in the shop using JustPark. The location code is 625130.

HGVs can also pay by using SNAP. The location code is 13461.

The fees are strictly enforced by GroupNexus.

This information is provided to us by third parties. You should always check with staff on site.

Contact Details

Trivia and History

The site is known locally as Gonerby Moor services, after the name of the interchange.

The service area entrance is also used to access an adjacent Downtown superstore and garden centre. This land is due to be expanded massively into a designer outlet; they refer to the Moto facilities as the "north zone".

Granada renewed their lease on the land in 2000, allowing the service area to operate for another 25 years. The land's rent was recorded as £953,000 per year at the time.

The hotel here was one of several which were used by David and Jean Davidson, a retired couple who stayed in Travelodges almost every single night from 1985 to 2007. The pair booked in advance to receive rates as low as £9 a night, and found the lifestyle easier than maintaining their own flat, which wasn't wheelchair accessible. The accessible room in the Grantham North Travelodge was known as The Davidson Suite in their honour.

Opening

Just south of Grantham at Spittlegate Level was the well-known independent café, Tony's Café. When the Grantham Bypass opened in 1962, around 30% of HGVs were choosing not to use it, as they wanted to stop at Tony's.

Tony opened a new café on the A1018 close to the Gonerby Moor Roundabout, which was the northern end of the new bypass, on 1 January 1964. There was a large HGV parking area next to a car park, with a fuelling area to the north and a main building that was roughly the same shape as now, but with the main corridor being uncovered: the restaurant, shop and toilets all had their own doors. At the back of the parking area was an outstation used by the Road Research Laboratory. Space was left for a motel.

The site was taken over by Trusthouse Forte in 1972, with the café becoming a Little Chef in 1980. The building would have been styled similarly to their offerings at Barnsdale Bar and Peartree.

Trusthouse Forte refurbished the site in 1984, turning the restaurant into The Granary and opening a new forecourt branded Mobil. By now it was employing up to 110 staff. As of 2023 there is still a very battered, blue 'Services' sign on what was the A1018 (now the B1174), which probably dates back to this era. A new entrance was created directly from the A1 southbound. A tourist information centre was added in 1986.

As with all Forte service areas, it was branded Welcome Break in 1988. As well as the Little Chef and The Granary, by now it had a coffee shop, a sales shop, a tourist information centre and a hotel branded Forte Travelodge. The hotel used to charge rates well below the chain's motorway sites. Little Chef was branded more prominently than Welcome Break. The land to the south began to be sold in the following years.

When Granada acquired Welcome Break and were forced to sell all their motorway sites in 1996, Grantham was able to remain with them, and became a Granada site. As Granada already owned Colsterworth, to them Grantham was known as 'Grantham North'. Granada extended the building to add a Burger King, and around this time a roof was placed over the main corridor.

After Granada became Moto and its other brands had been split up, the Little Chef was closed. Part of it became Costa, but the kitchen and servery remain in place, behind the partitions.

Junction

A 1994 study found that the service area was 2x more popular with southbound traffic, as a result of the new entrance making it much easier to access on that side.

The road layout underwent major changes in 2007. The A1 was moved to the west of the interchange, with the old road becoming the southbound slip roads and a new bridge being constructed for northbound traffic.

Refurbishment

The site received major investment during early 2024, with 12 new high-powered GRIDSERVE chargers installed in the car park and a new Changing Places facility built at the front of the main building. The toilet and shower facilities were then refurbished, reopening in late February 2024 with additional showers. Following the completion of the toilets and shower facilities, the Costa store then closed for a refurbishment, reopening in early March.

The final addition came in the form of a new KFC restaurant situated in the former Little Chef area at the back of the building, an area which has been closed off to the public since 2008. This opened on 29 March 2024.

Works have now commenced to triple the size of the HGV parking area here, as the site currently only has 15 spaces. The site is expected to gain an additional 11 spaces in the current parking area and 29 more spaces next to the Travelodge.

Alternatives

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