Ashford Police Training Centre
Coordinates: 51°10′05″N 0°52′23″E / 51.168°N 0.873°E
Ashford Police Training Centre (PTC) was the main training centre for police recruits from forces in the south east of England from 1973 to its closure in 2006. It was also known as Grosvenor Hall after the nineteenth-century building at the heart of the centre in Kennington, Ashford, Kent.
Grosvenor Hall was originally called Bockhanger Hall and built in 1875 by James S. Burra (1838–1911), an Ashford banker. Burra was a keen arborist and the Hall was surrounded a collection of trees (many of which were destroyed in the storm of 1987). In 1913 the Hall and estate were purchased by Percy H. Jones who converted it into a tuberculosis sanatorium. He transferred patients from a sanatorium called Grosvenor House in Sandgate, Kent and renamed Bockhanger Hall to Grosvenor Hall. During its time as a sanatorium a notable patient was Simone Weil, the poet and philosopher, who died there on 24 August 1943. Grosvenor Hall was later bought by Kingswood Learning and Leisure Ltd (part of Inspiring Learning) in 2010 and turned into and outdoor education and adventure centre which is still running.
Advances in antibiotics following the Second World War gradually made tuberculosis sanatoriums obsolete. Grosvenor Hall closed as such in 1955, became a private clinic from 1956 to 1958 and then a conference centre until 1961 when it was bought by the Metropolitan Police for use as a cadet training school. New classrooms and dormitory blocks were constructed in the estate. During this period Metropolitan Police cadet training was split between Hendon and Ashford but in 1972 was moved completely to Hendon.
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