The North Muskham branch was a former Little Chef restaurant located on the southbound side of the A1 near Newark-on-Trent, Nottinghamshire.
Address and Onsite Information[]
ADDRESS: A1 South, North Muskham, Newark On Trent, Nottinghamshire, NG23 6HT
ONSITE FACILITIES: BP, Londis (forecourt), Costa Express (forecourt), Rollover Hot Dogs (forecourt), AdBlue (forecourt), Burger King, Greggs
History[]
Opened between 1958 & 1965, North Muskham was one of Little Chef's earliest sites. The A1 is a road running from London to Edinburgh. It feeds many towns, intersects with many routes to the north/south and is often used by a lot of long distance traffic. Thus, a Little Chef here would be sure to have plenty of passing trade and be able to attract a lot of long-distance traffic. Little Chef's owners Forte thought so too and, to maximise the restaurant's potential, chose a location close to Newark on Trent, a nearby town with a large population, to help encourage locals to the site. The site chosen also had a filling station which presented a great opportunity for Little Chef to attract additional custom to the restaurant
Between 1968 and 1972, North Muskham was joined by its northbound partner when the Cromwell site, located almost directly opposite, was joined by a Little Chef.
In the 1980s, Forte had decided to remodel the Little Chef at North Muskham by giving it a completely new building which was more modern than before but didn't cost a lot of money to build. This was a new method introduced by builders and it was done by constructing the new building around the old building and then demolishing the walls of the old building. This meant that the new building didn't have to be built from scratch, thus saving time, effort and money. In this way they could still utilise original features such as toilets, plumbing and ducting.
Soon after the rebuild, around 1986, the Little Chef was joined by a Little Chef Lodge hotel where tired travellers could stop off for the night. This was later rebranded as Travelodge in 1989.
In 2008, North Muskham sadly lost its northbound partner, leaving it to soldier on alone to primarily serve southbound traffic. However, northbound happily reopened as an independent known as Cafe Amore although this unfortunately closed in 2015.
In 2015, the decision was made by Little Chef owners, Kout Food Group, to convert North Muskham from a Little Chef into a Burger King. This resulted in the closure of the Little Chef in April 2015. It reopened as a Burger King shortly afterwards. When Eurogarages took ownership of Little Chef, the ownership of the site transferred to them from Kout Food Group, and they refurbished the Burger King, adding a Greggs to former Little Chef servery areas.
In December 2020, Travelodge closed their hotel in favour of their new hotel in Newark town centre.
