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Thursday 29 September 2022

The demise of Knuston Hall

I have just been sent a link to the Northamptonshire Telegraph. It headlines the news that North Northamptonshire Council has decided to sell Knuston Hall, the location used for Wargame Developments’ annual Conference of Wargamers (COW) from 1981 until 2021.

In a statement, Councillor Graham Lawman, the Council’s executive member for highways, travel and assets, said:

Knuston Hall is a Grade II listed heritage asset and, until recently, has been used as a creative course and event centre including overnight accommodation. The hall was closed during the Covid-19 pandemic and re-opened briefly in 2021, with heavily restricted guest numbers, until it closed again in January 2022 following surveys conducted at the start of the year finding that it no longer met statutory compliance requirements. To overcome these would have entailed significant investment in the building. Unfortunately, a combination of the need for such a significant investment to bring it up to standard and a large uplift in annual maintenance budgets means the business has become financially unviable.

It is very doubtful that whoever buys Knuston Hall will reopen it as a residential conference centre, so the forty-year link between Wargame Developments and Knuston Hall is over. For those of us who spent many very enjoyable conferences there, it will be sadly missed.

I hope that the excellent staff are treated properly by the Council and are either redeployed to better jobs or are given enhanced early retirement or a significant redundancy payment. They certainly deserve to be treated properly as they and the Hall are – in my humble opinion – victims of the previous council's shambolic governance. Their incompetance and financial mismanagement, added to lack of investment in what was a viable income generating asset, has led to the situation where the Hall had to close.

12 comments:

  1. Very sad. You are spot on with your analysis.

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    1. Trebian,

      I am very sorry that we won’t be using Knuston Hall again, but after forty years I suppose that it was time to move on. Interestingly, the membership of WD is on the rise (it is now just over 100, having been around 90 for quite some time.

      All the best,

      Bob

      PS. If I win a really large amount of money on the National Lottery in the next few months, I’d love to be able to buy Knuston Hall, pay to have it renovated, and then reopen it as a conference and course centre, just to show the Council that they have made a big mistake.

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  2. Hi Bob,

    It is sad news indeed, doubly so when you consider the mismanagement that has led to this stage. I have only attended one COW as you know but I consider myself fortunate to have been to what was for many years the ‘spiritual home’ of WD.

    All the best,

    DC

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    Replies
    1. David Crook,

      It is sad news, but in some ways it might be a good thing for the development of WD. Now that we can use a larger venue, we can have more attendees … and we have already seen an increase in the membership over the last two years,

      All the best,

      Bob

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  3. Always sad when this sort of thing happens. In Norfolk we had the use of Holt Hall for educational purposes - stayed there a few times during my teaching career - that got sold, so now Norfolk doesn't have a valuable educational resource. Likewise, Wisbech Castle used to be used as a Teacher's Centre by Cambs County - that was closed a few years back and handed over to the Town Council - has a website but seems moribund.

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    1. Rob Young,

      It seems to have been happening across the country. When I started teaching in London, each borough had its own well-resourced teacher’s centre and subject specialist centres. The specialist centres were closed in the aftermath of the closure of the Inner London Education Centre, and more recently the borough-based teacher’s centres have been downsized or shut down completely and their work is being done in-house or by privatised ‘consultants’.

      All the best,

      Bob

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  4. Replies
    1. Geordie an Exiled FoG,

      I think that a lot of us feel like that.

      All the best,

      Bob

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  5. BOB,
    Perhaps you may be lucky if the new owners re-open the hall to accomodate events such as COW. Knuston Hall has lots of character. Sometimes the decisions Local Councils make can be altogether wrong and not appropriate. Best Wishes. KEV.

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    1. Kev Robertson (Kev),

      I think that we would be very, very lucky for that to happen.

      Unfortunately, it is an ideal location for a wedding venue (lots of parking, dining facilities, and onsite accommodation) or for possible conversion to a retirement home.

      Next door to the Knuston Hall site is a privately-owned specialist care centre that used to be owned and operated by the old Northamptonshire Council as a sort of residential youth facility. They sold it many years ago, and it is now owned by Elysium Healthcare. They could easily absorb Knuston Hall into their little 'empire' or it could be sold to a similar sort of organisation.

      With its extensive grounds, the Hall would make a very tempting location for a retirement home or to be the centre of a retirement 'village'. The Hall has Grade II Listed status, which means that it means the building has particular historic and/or architectural significance, and is subject to regulations which protect its unique character. The regulations state what you can and can’t do to a listed building, both externally and internally, but you can still make some alterations and extensions. This must, however, be done with the explicit consent of your local authority ... but as in this case the local authority is the seller, I doubt that they would raise too many objections to changes that the purchasers wished to make.

      All the best,

      Bob

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  6. Do you have any idea as to what issues the "no longer met statutory compliance requirements" might have covered?

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    1. Nigel Drury,

      No idea what the issues were, but if I was cynical and wanted an excuse to shut Knuston Hall, I might suggest that if one looked hard enough, one could find something that justified that statement.

      All the best,

      Bob

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