Epping Forest Country Club

The three venues were called 'Atlantis', 'The Casino Club', and Woolston Hall Known as 'The Country Club'. All but one of the buildings have now been demolished and a Holmes Place (now Nuffield Health) health club built on the site. The only original building that remains is that of 'The Casino Club' and its swimming pool complex, which used to host 'Splash' parties where over 5,000 people used to attend.

The original 'Woolston Hall' dated back to 1740, and was owned by the Scott family and sold in around 1930 to the Co-Op and was used as their sport and social club. In the late '70s Woolston Hall was converted into a high class private members club by Sean Connery and 1966 World Cup winning captain Bobby Moore. One night in the early 1980s a group of local businessmen and their wives attempted to get into a local club in Walthamstow, unfortunately for the owner of this club his doormen decided not to let them in because only two of the party were members. One of the group was a local builder and after being refused entry decided to purchase the lease of 'Woolston Hall', which by now was suffering from a lack of customers. The club was swiftly closed down and turned into a night club, with much less strict membership criteria, and soon attracted huge numbers of local customers, but was still restricted to over-25s. It soon became overwhelmed with its own success, the club facilities were extended to include, tennis, golf, venues for weddings, private functions, corporate events and a new fitness centre, then in the mid-'90s added 'The Jungle', which after a few years was refurbished as 'Atlantis'.

After the trio of clubs closed, things moved quite rapidly. The Atlantis building was first demolished, and redevelopment work began on the site to provide a 40,000-square-foot health and fitness club for Holmes Place. A new high tech driving range was built along with the new health club building on the other side of the car park. The car park was renovated and the entire site tidied up. The former Casino club was turned into a bar for the members of the health club. The original 'Woolston hall' remained empty and suffered from neglect until 2007 when it was purchased and refurbished, and was about to be opened as a restaurant when a serious fire broke out.

The golf club owners spent an estimated £750,000 on renovating the building into a high-class restaurant, however in the early hours of Wednesday 17 September 2008, a serious fire broke out within Woolston Hall, in the older part of the building, that was undergoing renovation work. The fire totally gutted the stately manor house.[1][2] Essex fire brigade reported significant problems fighting the fire, not only because of the scaffolding surrounding the building, but also due to a lack of high flow water supply. This was soon resolved by draining the swimming pool, which was once used for 'Splash' nights in Atlantis, to fight the fire.

It has been reported that the golf club had only insured the original £1m purchase price and had not covered the costs of the renovation work.

This put an end to the re-opening plans, which had been put on hold for almost 2 years from the initial plans due to financial problems related to the 'crunch'. The cause of the fire is yet unknown and the final investigation results are awaited.

Planning permission was submitted to Epping Forest council post fire to turn the building into a restaurant which were accepted. In late 2010, after substantial rebuilding and renovation, the building finally reopened as a restaurant, under the name of 'Mooros'. The name is based on some previous owners of the hall in the mid-1970s—Bobby Moore and Sir Sean Connery.[3]

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51.6408°N 0.0934°E / 51.6408; 0.0934