Lolworth services
(former)
| Road: | A14 westbound between J28A and J29 (Google Maps link) |
| Address: | Little Chef Huntingdon Road Lolworth Cambridge Cambridgeshire CB23 8DR |
| Opened: | 1969 |
| Services type: | Two sites located between junctions, with no public connection between them. |
Lolworth services was positioned on the A14 westbound, just beyond the Bar Hill exit. It was sometimes known as 'Bar Hill services' as a result.
It was positioned on the westbound carriageway, and the restaurant operated in tandem with its eastbound partner, Swavesey.
An existing transport café, itself a converted property, was positioned next to a forecourt named after Bar Hill. Little ChefHistory turned it into one of their restaurants in around 1970. The restaurant had three pitches to its roof, and was painted white with red stripes.
In 1985 Forte moved and rebuilt the building in a more modern style, with brown bricks and a low roof. There were plans to add a Little Chef Lodge at the time; the initial application was refused but it was advertised as opening in 1988. It possibly opened as a Travelodge.
The filling station was branded Fina, who called it "Lolworth service station", with "a PUNCH station!" written across its canopy. It had just two filling rows, and a small sales shop to the side. In 1998 the petrol station was destroyed when a lorry collided with it. It later became Total, changing to BP in 2012. It was operated by MRH and had an unbranded shop and a Costa Express machine.
Lolworth gained a Coffee Stop in the 1990s, which became a Café Nescafe and then Burger King, and was then later removed. The place tended to get overlooked, because all Little Chef's investment went down the road to Fenstanton. In 2014, Lolworth Little Chef was finally treated to a major refurbishment, the first to be done by Kout Food Group. This saw the Burger King reinstated.
Closure
Lolworth services was on borrowed time for a while. In 1994 it was announced that the A14 here would be replaced by a new motorway, the A14(M), and the small service area at Lolworth was unlikely to be part of this. A much larger service area opened nearby at Cambridge in preparation, reducing the demand for Lolworth.
That project took some time to come to fruition, but the restaurant and forecourt eventually closed on 14 May 2017. From this point, signs on the A14 advised traffic that there is "no fuel or services", while a sign for Cambridge services was erected a few miles before. The Travelodge did solider on, but it eventually closed in early 2019.
After the new A14 opened in May 2020, the old Lolworth site stands abandoned and isolated. Even though the finished road never opened as a motorway, it's still built to motorway standards, and those standards wouldn't allow for an exit to be provided to a service area so small and so close to the Bar Hill junction.
It is possible that when the bridleway is finished, access to the old car park may be possible via that. It is likely that the land will eventually be cleared and become part of the neighbouring industrial estate.