History
All-In-One bought the 7 acre Hills Garden Centre in April 2011. The site is located in Allostock, just south of Knutsford and was well known for its miniature railway.
The Family run business closed its doors to the public on Sunday, July 31 2016 after it became financially ‘unviable’ due to a drop in footfall.
Jason Stafford, chairman of All-In-One, which also has a store in Middleton told the Guardian that he is ‘desperately disappointed’ about the closure.
“It didn’t make any money,” he said. “A retail business in a rural location always struggles to get the footfall. Unfortunately there wasn’t enough regular visitors to make it viable.
“It was struggling for the last two or three years. The losses were unsustainable.”
There were not enough people supporting local business and too many supporting Google and Ebay. Retailers cannot be show rooms for Amazon and others to sell online.”
The Explore
Usually Garden centres wouldnt intrest me in the slightest whether they be derelict or not but this place i'd wanted to see for a while because it had the nice little added feature of a miniture railway.
It seems to be holding up rather nicely, but of course after looking back over older reports it seems things have gone missing but nothing had been extremely vandalised and nature seems to be reclaiming most of the site.
Of course it wouldnt be a garden centre without a santas grotto which was also nice but sadly some evildoer has decided to smash up santa and his reindeers!
All-In-One bought the 7 acre Hills Garden Centre in April 2011. The site is located in Allostock, just south of Knutsford and was well known for its miniature railway.
The Family run business closed its doors to the public on Sunday, July 31 2016 after it became financially ‘unviable’ due to a drop in footfall.
Jason Stafford, chairman of All-In-One, which also has a store in Middleton told the Guardian that he is ‘desperately disappointed’ about the closure.
“It didn’t make any money,” he said. “A retail business in a rural location always struggles to get the footfall. Unfortunately there wasn’t enough regular visitors to make it viable.
“It was struggling for the last two or three years. The losses were unsustainable.”
There were not enough people supporting local business and too many supporting Google and Ebay. Retailers cannot be show rooms for Amazon and others to sell online.”
The Explore
Usually Garden centres wouldnt intrest me in the slightest whether they be derelict or not but this place i'd wanted to see for a while because it had the nice little added feature of a miniture railway.
It seems to be holding up rather nicely, but of course after looking back over older reports it seems things have gone missing but nothing had been extremely vandalised and nature seems to be reclaiming most of the site.
Of course it wouldnt be a garden centre without a santas grotto which was also nice but sadly some evildoer has decided to smash up santa and his reindeers!
