Stafford services
Encyclopedia
Stafford services is a pair of motorway service station on the M6 motorway
M6 motorway
The M6 motorway runs from junction 19 of the M1 at the Catthorpe Interchange, near Rugby via Birmingham then heads north, passing Stoke-on-Trent, Manchester, Preston, Carlisle and terminating at the Gretna junction . Here, just short of the Scottish border it becomes the A74 which continues to...

 near Stone
Stone, Staffordshire
Stone is an old market town in Staffordshire, England, situated about seven miles north of Stafford, and around seven miles south of the city of Stoke-on-Trent. It is the second town, after Stafford itself, in the Borough of Stafford, and has long been of importance from the point of view of...

, Staffordshire
Staffordshire
Staffordshire is a landlocked county in the West Midlands region of England. For Eurostat purposes, the county is a NUTS 3 region and is one of four counties or unitary districts that comprise the "Shropshire and Staffordshire" NUTS 2 region. Part of the National Forest lies within its borders...

, England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

. In August 2011 it was rated as 4 stars (northbound - Moto
Moto Hospitality
Moto Hospitality is a company which operates 58 motorway service stations across the UK.Moto is owned by a consortium of shareholders including Australian Pension Funds and European and New Zealand Infrastructure Funds and is asset managed by Macquarie Investment Bank...

 and 3 stars (southbound - Roadchef
RoadChef
Roadchef is a company which operates twenty motorway service areas in the UK. Behind Moto and Welcome Break, it is the third largest motorway service area operator .-History:...

) by quality assessors at Visit England.

It is unusual, in that the facilities on the northbound (opened 1996) and southbound (1999) sides of the motorway are operated by separate companies: Moto
Moto Hospitality
Moto Hospitality is a company which operates 58 motorway service stations across the UK.Moto is owned by a consortium of shareholders including Australian Pension Funds and European and New Zealand Infrastructure Funds and is asset managed by Macquarie Investment Bank...

 (formerly Granada) and RoadChef
RoadChef
Roadchef is a company which operates twenty motorway service areas in the UK. Behind Moto and Welcome Break, it is the third largest motorway service area operator .-History:...

 respectively. They are one mile apart.

History

Prior to the construction of the station, a geophysical survey
Geophysics
Geophysics is the physics of the Earth and its environment in space; also the study of the Earth using quantitative physical methods. The term geophysics sometimes refers only to the geological applications: Earth's shape; its gravitational and magnetic fields; its internal structure and...

 was undertaken to examine cropmarks which possibly marked the location of a ring ditch
Ring ditch
In archaeology, the term ring ditch refers to a regularly shaped circular or pennanular ditch cut. The term is most often used as a generic description in cases where there is no clear evidence for the function of the site: for instance where it has been ploughed flat and is known only as a...

 to ensure that an archaeological site
Archaeological site
An archaeological site is a place in which evidence of past activity is preserved , and which has been, or may be, investigated using the discipline of archaeology and represents a part of the archaeological record.Beyond this, the definition and geographical extent of a 'site' can vary widely,...

 was not destroyed. The ditch was not found, although medieval and post-medieval artefacts were recovered.

Blue Boar constructed the southbound services, in addition to their services at Watford Gap but shortly before completion in 1999 they were acquired by RoadChef, who now operate the site.

Southbound

|-
|valign=top|
Operated by Moto
  • Costa Coffee
    Costa Coffee
    Costa Coffee is a British coffeehouse company founded in 1971 by Italian brothers Sergio and Bruno Costa, as a wholesale operation supplying roasted coffee to caterers and specialist Italian coffee shops. Since 1995 it has been a subsidiary of Whitbread, since when the company has grown to over...

  • Burger King
    Burger King
    Burger King, often abbreviated as BK, is a global chain of hamburger fast food restaurants headquartered in unincorporated Miami-Dade County, Florida, United States. The company began in 1953 as Insta-Burger King, a Jacksonville, Florida-based restaurant chain...

  • Eat and Drinks Company (Restaurant)
  • WHSmith
    W H Smith
    WHSmith plc is a British retailer, headquartered in Swindon, Wiltshire, England. It is best known for its chain of high street, railway station, airport, hospital and motorway service station shops selling books, stationery, magazines, newspapers, and entertainment products...

  • Marks and Spencer (Simply Food)
  • Fone Bitz
  • Toilets
  • Cash Machine
  • BP
    BP
    BP p.l.c. is a global oil and gas company headquartered in London, United Kingdom. It is the third-largest energy company and fourth-largest company in the world measured by revenues and one of the six oil and gas "supermajors"...

     fuel

|style="padding-left:40px;" valign=top|
Operated by RoadChef
  • Costa Coffee
    Costa Coffee
    Costa Coffee is a British coffeehouse company founded in 1971 by Italian brothers Sergio and Bruno Costa, as a wholesale operation supplying roasted coffee to caterers and specialist Italian coffee shops. Since 1995 it has been a subsidiary of Whitbread, since when the company has grown to over...

  • The Burger Company
  • RestBite (Restaurant)
  • WHSmith
    W H Smith
    WHSmith plc is a British retailer, headquartered in Swindon, Wiltshire, England. It is best known for its chain of high street, railway station, airport, hospital and motorway service station shops selling books, stationery, magazines, newspapers, and entertainment products...

  • Fone Bitz
  • Toilets
  • Cash Machine
  • Esso
    Esso
    Esso is an international trade name for ExxonMobil and its related companies. Pronounced , it is derived from the initials of the pre-1911 Standard Oil, and as such became the focus of much litigation and regulatory restriction in the United States. In 1972, it was largely replaced in the U.S. by...

     fuel

|}

Location

The services are located in Staffordshire on the M6 motorway between junctions 14 and 15, and are accessed directly from the motorway. Stoke on Trent is located about 10 miles (16.1 km) to the north, Manchester
Manchester
Manchester is a city and metropolitan borough in Greater Manchester, England. According to the Office for National Statistics, the 2010 mid-year population estimate for Manchester was 498,800. Manchester lies within one of the UK's largest metropolitan areas, the metropolitan county of Greater...

 about 60 miles (96.6 km) miles to the north, and Stafford
Stafford
Stafford is the county town of Staffordshire, in the West Midlands region of England. It lies approximately north of Wolverhampton and south of Stoke-on-Trent, adjacent to the M6 motorway Junction 13 to Junction 14...

 is about 8 miles (12.9 km) to the south. By road they are about 150 miles (241.4 km) from London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

 and 30 miles (48.3 km) from Birmingham
Birmingham
Birmingham is a city and metropolitan borough in the West Midlands of England. It is the most populous British city outside the capital London, with a population of 1,036,900 , and lies at the heart of the West Midlands conurbation, the second most populous urban area in the United Kingdom with a...

.

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
x
OK