The Skeeby branch was a Little Chef restaurant located on the A1 near the small village of Skeeby, North Yorkshire.
Address and Onsite Information[]
ADDRESS: A1 Northbound, Skeeby, Richmond, North Yorkshire, DL10 5EQ
ONSITE FACILITIES: Travelodge (Book Room)
For more information, visit Motorway Services Online
History[]
Life at Skeeby started in the 1960s when an independent, known as the Clock Cafe, opened on site. The cafe sat about 1 mile south of the famous Scotch Corner junction, a busy intersection serving two roads (A1 and A66) heading towards Scotland.
In the early-mid 1970s, Forte, along with many other transport cafes, bought the Clock Cafe and replaced it with a Little Chef restaurant as part of their plans to expand the chain rapidly across the UK. In order to save money and time, Forte decided to house the new Little Chef inside of the original Clock Cafe building. However, the restaurant was later rebuilt in a much more modern building, which still exists today.
In 1988, the site saw the addition of a Little Chef Lodge hotel in order to provide accommodation for tired travellers. This was later rebranded as Travelodge in 1989.
Owing to its prime location beside the busy A1, Forte wasted no time in adding a Little Chef Coffee stop to the building in the early 90s, although this was later removed.
Around 1997, another Little Chef had opened up shop at the nearby Scotch Corner Services, located a mile north of Skeeby Little Chef. Given the plentiful choice of facilities at Scotch Corner Services, as well as it being accessible to all traffic on two major routes (the A1 and A66), it was likely that the Little Chef here would be a more popular site than Skeeby. However, the restaurant at Scotch Corner ceased trading by 2008, as part of Moto's restructuring. This left Skeeby as the sole Little Chef trading in the area.
In late 2009, Rainton North Little Chef (located 20 miles south) closed. This left Little Chef with unused Coffee Tempo equipment and signage. Rather than letting it go to waste, the equipment was transferred to Skeeby and a new Coffee Tempo outlet opened there instead. However, this proved to be unpopular and was consequently gone by 2011.
In 2012, it was announced that the A1 between Leeming Bar and Barton (the section that the Little Chef stands on) would be upgraded to a new three laned motorway. Work on the new road started in 2014 and was completed in 2017. As a result, a huge amount of traffic was taken away from the Little Chef, despite still being accessible via a local access road. However, this would not be the strict cause for the demise of the restaurant as in the same year, Euro Garages purchased the chain and over the next year, closed all of the Little Chef restaurants nationwide. Skeeby closed in May 2017 and as of today, nothing has ever replaced the restaurant, leaving it as an abandoned eyesore next to the surviving Travelodge hotel. Even though that the building is now derelict, some DNA still remain there to this day, including some tourist information leaflets that are now 10 years outdated, as well as posters and furniture.