Ashford Police Training Centre

Ashford Police Training Centre 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 , an Ashford banker. Burra was a keen arborist and the Hall was surrounded a collection of trees . 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.

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