Health Blog

Richard Pitcairn-Knowles was practising Osteopathy locally in the late 50s when he decided that he should protect his future by investing in a property from which to work.

Springbank House was on the market and after an initial attempt was outbid, it was available once again. Despite lots of uncertainty over a possible Bligh’s development taking place, Richard went ahead and purchased the building.

Planning permission for change of use was granted albeit with some opposition from a number of councillors, as you can see
from the news article at the time …

With the help of a local architect, Richard converted the house into an upstairs office and two treatment
rooms, along with two offices downstairs to rent out. The garage was knocked down to allow access to a
small car park behind the building.

Sevenoaks District Council had purchased the property next door as a potential entrance to a new Bligh’s
car park development – as it eventually was used.

The Osteopathic clinic flourished over the following 31 years. Bligh’s development was eventually started in 1998, with a compulsory purchase of the front corner of the clinic property which required a new entrance to be created – just as it is today.

It wasn’t all plain sailing – we did have a shock when Bligh’s was 99% finished and we
received a letter from the developers to say they would only allow us four cars per day to
use the road outside the entrance! Unfortunately, the Sevenoaks District Council had failed
to complete a legal element to the change of entrance before they handed everything over
to the Bligh’s Development. We found ourselves being ‘held hostage’ while they squabbled over who was responsible for some snagging elements of Bligh’s.

Thankfully we were able to ignore the letter and continue to work as normal.
Mark Pitcairn-Knowles took over the running of the clinic in 2000 and he started to diversify the treatments on offer. There have been many changes in the intervening years and we now find the clinic occupying all the rooms, upstairs and downstairs, along with the Hub that was built in 2017 allowing us to provide a full range of Musculoskeletal, Mental Health and Wellbeing treatments