Our history section attempts to look at why things are the way that they are today. It is broken into several sections, taking you back to the early days of service station planning, and looking at some of the changes that have happened since.
True pedants will point out that everything on this website talks about history! If what you need doesn't fall under any of the headings below, it may fit better under Brands, Operators or How Things Work. Items relating to one specific service area tend to be listed on that individual service area's database page.
Motorway service areas used to be central to the motorway planning system, but not all the planned ones materialised. There are plenty of examples of service areas that were never built or even half-built!
It may be a bit too on-brand for us to argue that every service area is interesting, so instead we have picked five whose architecture really stands out.