New light for the night, architects buy disused Little Chef on A1
Work has started on restoring a well-known 1930s’ Great North Road landmark…but as an office building rather than the motorists’ services it has been for most of its life.
The Wansford Knight structure close to the junction of the A1 and A47 near Peterborough in Cambridgeshire faced an uncertain future after it closed as a Little Chef in 2007.
Comprehensively vandalised since then, CCW highlighted its uncertain future back in October 2010. But now, the property has been purchased by local architects, Harris McCormack, who aim to turn it into the firm’s new ‘showcase’ headquarters. The essential fabric of the 1932 Bauhaus-inspired building will stay, but with some new exterior flourishes. These will include a glass walkway at the back and new Art Deco style windows replacing the bay ones at the front.
‘The plan is to return this iconic building to its former glory,’ clarified Harris McCormack office manager Lisa Skingsley to CCW. ‘The graffiti will all be gone and hopefully, it won’t be back. We’ve had to overcome quite a lot of problems such as dry rot inside, but now that’s sorted out, in the next few months it should be really transformed. Our intention is that it will really stand out.’ The renovation should be complete by around Christmas this year.
The building started life as one of the roadhouses of the ‘Knights on the Road’ chain in 1932. This company’s ambitious plans to have a Knight facility every 50 miles on main routes floundered the following year, and the Wansford site became the New Mermaid Inn.
In this guise, it was a popular haunt of American servicemen, including reputedly Clark Gable, during World War Two. Little Chef took it over in the 1960s and occupied it until last decade. It missed out on being listed by English Heritage because of the front bay windows added in the 1950s.
Since 2007, it has remained empty, although Mark Wilsmore, owner of the Ace Café, did look into restoring it. He described it as ‘a fantastic building with a great vista of the Great North Road. However, the limited access and the close proximity of Wansford village means that holding car club events there could cause problems.’
‘The design of this building, of this size and built for this use makes it extremely rare,’ John Wright of the Twentieth Century told CCW about the historical survivor.
Richard Gunn