The Pennine Tower

The Pennine Tower was originally due to open in April 1965 but due to delays with construction it was eventually pushed back to November, as part of the newly constructed Forton services, it was actually the second service station to open on the motorway after Charnock Richard which opened a few years earlier in 1963. The services took its name from the nearby village of Forton and was designed by T. P. Bennett and Son, when the facility opened it was originally operated by The Rank Organisation. It was opened on the Preston-Lancaster section of the M6 with junction 33 is to the north and junction 32 is to the south; this section of the motorway opened in the same year as the services.

The tower boasted an up-market restaurant and a sun deck which had been designed to resemble an air traffic control tower which spans 22.5 m metres across. Initially the tower proved popular with motorists offering unrivalled views of the countryside. However, during the first quarter of 1967, the tower-restaurant recorded a loss of £700 (approximately £10,700 in 2023). While that's the only period for which precise figures are available, it confirms that even during the supposed peak of the motoring-dining era, the tower was struggling to cover its basic running costs. Rank complained that most visitors weren't buying anything, and that traffic levels were much lower than expected.

The tower had space to hold more than 120 diners. It is true that modern fire regulations wouldn't allow 120 people to congregate in the tower, so it wouldn't be able to operate at full capacity and staff would have to count how many people came up. However the reality is that for most of its life the tower would have struggled to attract 120 diners at any one time, and patronage was usually in the single figures.

Fast forward a few years and cost-cutting was having an additional impact, plus social changes and driving becoming less leisurely all meant that the tower's prospects were bleak. Most of Rank's restaurants were soon struggling to make any money, and the unique running costs and impracticality of the tower meant it was especially difficult to justify. The desperate cutbacks meant the food was soon described as "an insult”.

What was left of the 'fine dining' restaurant was converted to a trucker's lounge, swapping with the facilities downstairs, before the tower closed completely to the public in 1989. It then soldiered on for another 15 years, partially re-fitted, as a head office, then as staff training and storage, but even this became too impractical, and the tower is now not used at all.Test