Tag: Neville Mercer

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My arrivals at Huntingdon Street between 1964 and 1969 were always by means of the North Western/Trent X2 from Manchester. Ribble vehicles could also be found on this service, as some journeys continued through Manchester to Blackpool, relabelled as X60s. As Robin Hood Coaches (pre 1961) and then Barton provided a daily express service between Nottingham and Blackpool, the terms of the X2 licence allowed through bookings but laid down strict conditions about the number of duplicates and prohibited any advertising save as a connecting service rather than a direct link. Unfortunately North Western and Ribble drivers were in the habit of parking up for their layovers next to the Barton inspectors’ hut, blatantly displaying “Blackpool X2” as their outbound destination! I gather that stern letters often followed such faux-pas. What follows is a summary of the activity on Huntingdon Street’s platforms during my many visits (or should that be pilgrimages?) during the second half of the 1960s. Most of these visits were made on Saturdays, but I did make several mid-week visits during the summer holiday periods. My earliest possible arrival time was just before noon, so I have also added details of other movements which avoided my personal attentions. It should be remembered that Platforms 1-4 were the southern half of the bus station, with 1 being adjacent to Huntingdon Street and 4 across from the municipal power station (or “Tram Depot”, a misnomer which spread from young bus-spotters to the later commercial developers of the site).

Platform 1

As noted in Part Two, this was mainly the preserve of Nottingham City Transport routes 25/25A which operated as circulars to Thackeray’s Lane in the north-east of the city. The 25 took the direct route first while the 25A went the long way around via Carlton before returning via the shorter leg. In the evenings and on Sundays the short leg was eliminated, with all journeys operating Huntingdon Street-Carlton-Thackeray’s Lane and return via the same route, showing service number 25 in both directions. NCT favoured open radiator Regent Vs for the route during my years at Huntingdon Street, usually with Park Royal bodywork.

Barton’s express service 9 to Skegness also used Platform 1, and an occasional double-decker was still used as a duplicate. On one visit in August 1966 I saw Barton’s unique lowbridge Loline parked next to Lammas Lodge with the blinds set for a trip to Skegness later in the day. By the 1960s though, this was an increasingly rare sight as traffic decreased from the post-war heyday. The more regular performers were single-deck coaches, especially the second-hand Reliances bought from the Cream Line group and elsewhere. For a while in the 1950s it appears that Barton’s service 34 to Llandudno also used this platform after being evicted from Platform 2 in the general swap-around after the Broad Marsh migration. This left before my arrival, got back after my departure, and left no trace of its existence on the bus station destination boards, so I really cannot say where it departed from in the 1960s.

Platform 2

Before the opening of Broad Marsh in 1952 Platform 2 was the domain of Barton alone, housing the busy 7/7A/8 cluster of services to the Calverton area and the less frequent services 22/24 to the Vale of Belvoir. After the mass migration Barton lost the platform to Trent who used it for the half-hourly 65 to Bunny (continuing to Loughborough every two hours as the 66), the high frequency services to Gedling and beyond (67-70/70A/70B/71, with a combined frequency of five per hour), and the half-hourly 76 to Burton Joyce (continuing to Southwell every two hours as the 74). A more frequent service to Southwell was provided by Mansfield District Traction service 215 which was the only non-Trent presence on Platform 2. This was usually operated by MDT Lodekka rear-loaders but I did see a couple of Regent IIIs on the service before their eventual withdrawal. The hectic Trent activity on the platform was mostly double-decked with PD2s and PD3s gradually yielding to Atlanteans during the decade. The exceptions were the 65/66 to Bunny/Loughborough which were the preserve of single-deckers, particularly the 36ft Leopard/Willowbrook DPs.

Platform 3

The Trent invasion of Platform 2 displaced Barton’s 7/7A/8 to Platform 3 where they took the space vacated by migratory Barton services 2 to Melton Mowbray, 6 to Keyworth, and 23/26 to the Vale of Belvoir. Barton service 12 to Leicester had also used platform 3 before 1952 but moved to platform 6 during the reorganisation of stands. The 7/7A/8 cluster of services was a bastion of Barton’s Leyland PD2 fleet, with both second-hand and “bought new” examples in evidence. Having the platform to itself Barton also tended to use the offside lane as additional parking, particularly for excursion and tour coaches.

South Notts’ fleet number 80 (80 NVO) was a 1962 PD3 with Northern Counties L65F bodywork, one of two such vehicles acquired just before the Lowlander years. In this shot, taken on 4th May 1968, it is seen leaving platform 4 for Loughborough. Visible in the parking area are three Trent double-deckers, and beyond them the distinctive clock housing of Lammas Lodge (John Stringer)

Platform 4

To my younger eyes this was the best platform on the bus station as it was allocated to independents other than Barton. South Notts Bus Co were the largest user in terms of departures, with their half-hourly route to Loughborough (which saw the frequency as far as Gotham doubled to every 15 minutes on Saturday) operated by a fascinating mixture of lowbridge PD2s and PD3s (two of the latter with front entrances) and low-height Albion Lowlanders. And before anybody points it out, I know that the Lowlanders had “Leyland” lettering on the fibre-glass radiator cowlings – I just prefer to ignore such corporate re-branding. On Wednesdays, Saturdays, and summer Sundays South Notts also had a single-deck presence on their village service to Thrumpton, providing a rare chance to see a Duple Roadmaster which didn’t have Dinky Toys stamped on its base-plate.

The second most frequent user of the platform was Gash of Newark, rightly renowned for its immaculate fleet of Daimler double-deckers. By the time I became a regular at Huntingdon Street the Massey bodied examples reigned supreme, some of them older chassis whose original bodywork by Strachans had disintegrated. Gash’s direct main road service to Newark ran hourly from Sunday to Friday, but half-hourly on Saturdays. A variation which abandoned the main road for Orston and the villages beyond before finding its way to Newark ran infrequently on Wednesdays and Saturdays only, with departures from Huntingdon Street at 1305 and 1505, If you were very lucky this might produce a sighting of one of Gash’s Willowbrook bodied Albion Nimbuses.

Here we have W Gash & Sons Daimler CVD6 it is on platform 4 and has a Barton BTS1 behind it on platform 3 – presumably on one of the 7/7A/8 cluster although I can’t read its identity or destination.

The third independent to be found on platform 4 was Skills, better known for its long distance tours than its local stage carriage route. As often happens in such cases the route in question was acquired as a by-product of purchasing another operator for its coaching licences. Skills acquired Jacklin’s “Elect Service” of East Bridgford in 1944 along with a half-share of the route from East Bridgford to Nottingham. A year later Trent bought Lewis of East Bridgford which operated the other half of the joint service. Surprisingly, Skills kept their half, operating a succession of new and used double-deckers on the route at a frequency of every 90 minutes, In the 1960s the Skills workings were covered by a pair of forward entrance Met-Cam bodied PD3s bought new in 1959 and looking rather odd in Skills two-tone green colour scheme. Trent operated their share of the service at an intermittent frequency as route number 73, often with open platform rear-loaders which looked very cold and draughty compared to the Skills machines.

Platform 5

Moving on to the northern half of the bus station, platform 5 was the closest to Huntingdon Street and platforms 8 (and later 9) the nearest to the parking area. Before the opening of Mount Street Bus Station platform 5 was the territory of Midland General, providing departure points for services towards Alfreton, Ilkeston, and South Normanton. In post-war years it was allocated to Trent express services, including the X2 to Manchester, X3 to Skegness, X4 to Mablethorpe, X5 to Cleethorpes, X6 to Blackpool via Derby, and X7 to Great Yarmouth. As the destinations suggest, all but the X2 were infrequent seasonal routes, so in the off-peak periods the platform served as a dumping ground for Trent vehicles on layover and was also used as a departure point for tours and excursions.

Platform 6

Barton’s half-hourly service 12 to Leicester was the company’s only contribution to platform 6, but was always worth checking as it offered a variety of single-deckers including the Yeates bodied Reliances and VAL14s. Trent’s service 62 to Mansfield via the direct route was slightly more frequent (every 20 minutes), but offered a more boring offering of PD2s/PD3s/Atlanteans. The platform was Midland General’s last foothold at Huntingdon Street, providing space for the hourly B8 to Mansfield via Hucknall and Rainworth ( a most indirect route compared to the 62) and two much rarer services, the Saturdays only F3 to Mansfield (which omitted Hucknall) and the peak-hour only A1 to Ripley. In my era the B8 and F3 were usually operated by a selection of Lodekka derivatives.

Trent’s 1957 vintage PD2/Met-Cam Orion KCH 127 was given fleet number 1027 when new, but later became fleet number 784 as seen in this 1970 shot. The vehicle is parked next to the Trent inspectors’ hut at the north end of platform 4, preparing for a departure from platform 7 to Bingham on the 79A. (John Stringer)

Platform 7

This platform was used by Trent’s (ex Dutton’s Unity) service 84 to Sutton-in-Ashfield which ran half-hourly on Mondays-Fridays and every 15 minutes on Saturdays. It shared the platform with Trent’s service 79 to Grantham (jointly operated eight times each weekday with Lincolnshire Road Car who showed the service number 33C on their rear entrance Lodekkas), the wholly Trent operated 79A which filled in the gaps to provide a half-hourly service as far as Bingham, and the hourly 63 to Chesterfield (jointly operated by Trent and East Midland, with the latter using service number 12A). The Trent workings provided the usual double-deck fodder, while East Midland provided lowbridge Atlanteans and Lowlanders for variety.

Platform 8

Two further services operated jointly by Trent and East Midland departed from platform 8. These were the Trent 64 (EMMS 36) to Doncaster and the Trent 80 (EMMS 37) to Retford. The 64/36, which took a bottom-numbing 2 hours and 50 minutes to reach its destination, operated every two hours on Sundays-Fridays, but hourly on Saturdays, while the 80/37 was two-hourly throughout the week. On the weekday schedule the two services alternated, but on Saturdays the vehicles operating the two routes left Huntingdon Street in convoy at even hours plus 40 minutes. The two services’ relatively low frequency left plenty of room for other departures, and after the Broad Marsh migration in 1952 the platform became the departure point for “other” express services, meaning those not operated by Barton or Trent. These included Black & White (operating to Cheltenham on behalf of Associated Motorways), Hall Bros of South Shields (with well-known express routes from Coventry to Newcastle via Nottingham), Lincolnshire Road Car (which operated seasonal services to Mablethorpe as route A and to Cleethorpes as route B), Royal Blue (to Northampton and then Bournemouth for Associated Motorways), United Counties (to London), and the Yorkshire Services consortium of EMMS, EYMS, WYRCC, YTC and YWD which came through in force twice each day en route from a huge variety of Yorkshire towns to more southerly termini in Birmingham, London, and Luton.

Until 1961 the platform was also the departure point for Robin Hood’s services to Blackpool, Morecambe, and Southport, and their joint service (with Barton) from Corby in Leicestershire to Glasgow. Barton’s service number for the Glasgow route was 58, and after they acquired Robin Hood the daily (year-round) Blackpool service became the 61, and the seasonal Morecambe/Southport services the 62/63. The operations continued on platform 8 as before.

East Midland’s 36ft Reliance/Willowbrook DP fleet number C272 (272 UVO) was new in 1964, and is seen here six years later on platform 8 operating a Yorkshire Services departure to Bradford. (John Stringer)

Platform 9

Although (in theory!) the timings of the Yorkshire Services companies’ twice daily stampedes through Huntingdon Street should have avoided problems with other traffic, experience soon proved that this idea was merely a utopian conceit. United Counties would often have two of their vehicles parked up in the offside lane of platform 8 for extended periods and Hall Bros were equally fond of this as a layover spot for short working duplicates. Then the Yorkshire Services convoy would arrive, only to find the boarding lane blocked by an East Midland double-decker or two as the convoy’s late arrival (due to traffic en route) had placed them into conflict with stage carriage departures. By 1968 enough complaints had been filed with the bus station’s municipal overseers to belatedly stir them into action. The railings between platform 8’s offside lane and the small nose-in car parking area were removed, a shelter erected on the paved area beneath (somehow managing to precisely match the architecture of those erected 20 years earlier on platforms 1-8!) and a sign secured to the lamp-post asserting that this was now platform 9. Basically it was there to provide a “go to” option for express services which could not reach their preferred habitat. At the same time the parking of private vehicles on the bus station (other than a few cars owned by inspectors and other officials) was brought to an end. The practice of mixing car parking with bus manoeuvring areas had never been that wise of a proposition and there had been several accidents over the years, thankfully none of them too serious.

Passing Traffic

Until their all too swift departure in 1966 Nottingham City Transport trolleybuses could be seen at the south end of the bus station, passing the William Booth Memorial Halls on King Edward Street and then either turning right into Bath Street or continuing in a straight line into St Anne’s Well Road. There was also trolleybus overhead wiring on Huntingdon Street, but I never saw it in use and can only presume that it was used by vehicles coming into or out of Parliament Street depot. Apart from the terminating 25/25A the only other corporation motor bus service to use Huntingdon Street was the 51, an irregular service timed to suit the employees of John Player’s tobacco factories on Radford Boulevard. The other end of the route was on Carlton Road, only a few hundred yards beyond NCT’s Parliament Street garage.

After the opening of Broad Marsh in 1952 two new Midland General services found a home there, the F2 to Ilkeston via Kimberley and the F4 to Beauvale Estate. Both of these services bypassed the worst of the city centre traffic by using Huntingdon Street rather than Milton Street, and were usually operated by single-deckers which provided a change from the blue Lodekkas on the bus station itself.

Finally, no account of Huntingdon Street is complete without mention of Hughie’s Cafe, immediately to the north of platform 5. In order to serve as many people as possible in as short a space of time as possible the proprietor had invented his own (more efficient!) way of making tea. Large industrial sized tea-urns were loaded up with tea at such a density that the result was barely fluid. Cups were then placed under the spigot and received an oil-like splash of concentrated tea. The cups were then placed beneath a boiling water heater and the beverage diluted to a more acceptable strength. Yes, it was disgusting, but it was all part of the experience. And Hughie’s prices were very reasonable when compared to those of the far less “colourful” Journeys End cafe in Huntingdon House

Neville Mercer
09/2015

25/09/15 – 09:59

I’d just like to thank Neville Mercer for this 3-Part article. Great reading and appreciable research. I first became imprinted on (initially Barton) buses when a young child in Calverton, so Huntingdon Street bus station has a significant place in my memory.

Stephen Allcroft

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25/09/15 – 09:59

Speaking as someone who has lived in Nottingham almost all his life, I’d like to congratulate Neville Mercer on his excellent history of Huntingdon Street bus station. The piece contains a spectacular amount of information and detail, and not confined just to the bus station itself; there’s a fair amount of general history of Nottingham in there as well.
We lived on Clifton Estate, so most of my memories of buses were the services which went to Broad Marsh (the old and new versions). But we sometimes went to Nottingham on the South Notts services to Huntingdon Street, so I could be in the background of those 1960s photos.

KC

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26/09/15 – 06:03

Thoroughly enjoyed the series on that wonderful place which came to my attention in the mid 60s, travelling from Yorkshire to visit my Grandad in Chilwell.
The range of vehicles was amazing: two particular memories are awaiting the massive influx of Hall Bros vehicles on their service, and taking years to unravel the Gothic script fleetname and realise that the Newark-based firm was Gash, not Cash! Such are the misconceptions of youth.
And thanks to Neville for at last appraising me of the origins of what I now know to be Lammas Lodge. A building which always fascinated me (but not as much as the Barton vehicles parked near it).

John Carr

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27/09/15 – 05:51

Re the South Notts PD3, though the lower deck window layout is a little odd due to the position of the door, I just wonder how many 30 ft double deckers were built with four bay bodies?

Phil Blinkhorn

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02/10/15 – 05:56

Neville Mercer, I applaud you for this article. Thank you.
Like many other people, I find these have tidied up/triggered off long dormant memories, may I add a few of my own:
The Grantham service, which was in my recollection, the only Lincolnshire service to reach Nottingham – how come the “33C” route number – what were routes 33, 33A and 33B?
In this context, someone recently tried to explain that suffix
A meant Any deviation from the main route
B meant terminates Before normal destination
C means Continues beyond normal destination
D means any other Deviation from normal route
Please let this start off another series of theories?
Changing the subject, I never twigged that South Notts 76 & 80 (Northern Counties bodied PD3s) were four-bay 30-footers. I suppose they were really more like four-and-a-bit since the upstairs front and back bays were rather long, resulting in the extra bit in front of the entrance doors.

I have enclosed a slide from the late 60s – I suspect the background includes “Lammas Lodge” am I right?

Rob Hancock

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03/10/15 – 04:00

This series is absolutely brilliant. I lived in Nottingham or not far from it throughout the 50s, and can remember Huntingdon Street occupied by buses of every hue. Trent predominated, and seemed to be mainly pre-war Regents rebodied by Willowbrook – also I think a few utilities(?) and COG5s. At that time, Trent Leylands only seemed to figure on the No.8 from Derby, which came into Mount Street. Barton was still using a mixture of the famous Duple PD1s and PS1s, second hand PD1s from Leicester (and elsewhere!), and ex-Leeds Roe-bodied Regents and TDs. Midland General hadn’t yet received Lodekkas, and the height restricted route B8 was usually operated by lowbridge Regents of the RLH type. I can recall a trip to Sherwood Forest (Edwinstowe) on the East Midland 36 with a Guy Arab in the old sand-coloured livery. NCT’s 25, 25A and 25B were actually not all that frequent – only about half-hourly at that time, and often still run with the 1938 Met-Cam Regents – later superceded by the very similar 1948/49 batch, followed by the OTV Park Royal series. Interesting question about the Lincolnshire 33C – which again, I remember using about 1952, at which time we had a Bristol K going, and something different (a Leyland?) coming back. I am not certain, but I have a feeling the 33 may have run from Grantham to Bottesford – which would agree with the theory about “extension beyond normal destination” – but I had never heard the idea before. Just a small observation, the NCT 51 was never timetabled to start at Huntingdon Street – though I may have “loitered with intent” before proceeding to its starting point at the junction of Alfred Street South and Carlton Road, about two minutes run away.

Stephen Ford

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05/10/15 – 07:10

Many thanks to all who have posted for their kind words. Perhaps I could respond briefly to a couple of the posts.
Yes, Rob, that’s Lammas Lodge and you can tell that the photo is taken after 1967 as that was the year in which Barton started using “X” prefixes for its express services. I should say officially, as crews on the 61 to Blackpool were given to displaying “X61” after acquiring the service from Robin Hood six years earlier – presumably as it mimicked the “X60” at the northern end of the route. Speaking of Lammas Lodge, I failed to discover any evidence whatsoever that it was once used as a police station as alleged in a couple of publications which show it in the background of photographs. As far as I can tell it was a park-keepers’ lodge at first, and then when no longer needed for that purpose (as the former park had disappeared beneath the bus station) it was rented out to private tenants. A retired military officer was the tenant in the late 1930s, and then by 1950 the tenant was the widow of a local professional boxer. One website refers to it as “St Michael’s Police Lodge”, but this is clearly wrong. The part of the future Huntingdon St where it was located was originally Millstone Lane. St Michaels Road started three blocks to the north of the site. Also, the only reference I can find on the Web apart from that local nostalgia site, is to a Masonic “St Michaels Police Lodge” in suburban London. Does anybody know any differently from authoritative sources (ie, not just repetitions on different sites of the original assertions?)
Moving on to the NCT route 51, I never actually said that it started at the bus station, but that it passed along Huntingdon Street between the terminal points as named. Perhaps I could have put it more clearly but by that stage deadlines were looming!
Once again, thanks to everybody, particularly to Stephen for the 1950s reminiscences.

Neville Mercer

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06/10/15 – 07:01

Well, you live and learn! I had never realised that the NCT 51 ever went along Huntingdon Street (except the very north end, far beyond the bus station). Its traditional route was to head straight up Alfred Street (south, central and north) turning right onto Huntingdon Street just short of where it merges into Mansfield Road. The evidence was on my bookshelves in the 1971 timetable. Following the demolition and re-development of the St Anns area, Alfred Street ceased to be a through road. Thereafter the 51 started along Alfred Street south, then left onto St Anns Well Road, past the bus station, and left again (southwards) down Huntingdon Street, right into Lower Parliament Street, right into Glasshouse Street (back of where the Victoria station used to be) and left, back into Huntingdon Street (now heading north) just above the bus station – a long way round to go nowhere, no doubt caused by one way traffic restrictions.

Stephen Ford

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30/10/15 – 06:33

Neville,
An interesting series of articles, thank you.
Nottingham City Transport service 19 started operation from Huntingdon Street to Lenton Abbey Estate from 24/11/29. From 28/11/37 it was extended to Gordon Road/Dowson Street (the area known as Bluebell Hill) still operating via Huntingdon Street bus station. From February 1939 it was further extended to Porchester Road/Haywood Road, before being curtailed to St. Ann’s Hospital from July 1939. Service 19 was altered to run between the Old Market Square and Lenton Abbey Estate from 06/05/45.
Service 25 started operation from Huntingdon Street from 15/11/31. All journeys, whether via Carlton Road or Mansfield Road operated as service 25, the a suffix for Mansfield Road journeys was not used until 1944.During the 1960s journeys outwards via Carlton Road operated as service 25 and retained this number when returning inwards via Mansfield Road to Huntingdon Street. Journeys outwards via Mansfield Road operated as service 25a and retained this number when returning inwards via Carlton Road to Huntingdon Street. Short workings to Westdale Lane Top via Carlton Road used service number 25b were introduced from 12/04/53.During the 1960s the service frequency was better than the 30 minute headway suggested by Stephen . Although this headway applied on Sundays the off peak frequency (all via Carlton Road) was every 20 minutes, with a combined ten minute peak service via Carlton Road operated by service 25/25b and every 20 minutes via Mansfield Road. Services 25/25a/25b moved to Queen Street in the city centre from March 1972.
Barton’s service 14 to Ruddington operated from Broad Marsh not Huntingdon Street. It was the 54 to Clifton via Ruddington that operated from Huntingdon Street. Barton’s service 12 to Leicester also called at Broad Marsh on the way to and from Leicester.
The new Broad Marsh bus station opened on 31/10/71 and South Notts and Gash transferred their Loughborough and Newark services to Broad Marsh from Huntingdon Street from that date.
I can’t think why NCT service 51 figures in the discussions as during the 1960s it operated via Alfred Street south, central and north and only used the short section of Huntingdon Street between Alfred Street north and Mansfield Road, which was some distance from Huntingdon Street bus station.
There was a third catering facility at Huntingdon Street in addition to Hughie’s Cafe and Journey’s End. This was not available to the general public as it was Trent’s staff canteen located behind the Trent booking office and was available to all bus crews using the bus station.

Michael Elliott

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30/01/16 – 18:42

To Neville,
Thanks for the enthralling series. As one who does not know Nottingham at all, how much if anything is left of the area ?
I am not of course expecting any of the wonderful vehicles to be seen but if an opportunity arose to visit Nottingham are there any of the buildings still extant or has modernisation totally wiped the area clean of all traces.
Thanks for any information.

Mike Norris

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At the outbreak of the Second World War in September 1939, Nottingham’s Central Bus Station was in much the same condition as when it was built ten years earlier. There were still no shelters or seating on the eight platforms, and the only undercover accommodation for passengers was to be found at the south-eastern end, directly across from Platform 4. This area had a makeshift shelter (albeit on the only paved area in the bus station which had no departures!), a waiting room, some fairly disgusting toilets, and two phone boxes. This lack of any civilised facilities created good business for the two cafes adjacent to the bus station, and despite its exposure to the elements the ten year old site was already well over capacity. This was in part the City council’s fault as it continued to insist that all non-municipal services had to use the bus station, whether they actually wanted to or not. Street termini were to be the exclusive right of corporation vehicles.

Mount Street

The war might have been expected to ease the capacity problem, given that stage carriage services were slashed by 30% or more, but the missing timings on the traditional routes gave way to a host of vehicles provided for the military and for workers in local industries crucial to the war effort. Something had to be done and Nottingham City Council came up with a plan to establish a second bus station. This opened on a totally unsuitable hillside site at Mount Street in October 1944 and consisted of three platforms, curiously designated as 4, 5, and 6 – perhaps it was originally intended to be twice as large and nobody could be bothered to change the plans. On the positive side it had bus shelters on every platform. On the negative side the shelters’ canopies were made out of asbestos, seen as a perfectly acceptable material at that time.

As a result of this new competition the Central Bus Station became Huntingdon Street Bus Station. Services which left the city centre in a quadrant from the Hucknall road to the north to the River Trent in the west were transferred to Mount Street. The services which moved included Barton’s mainline routes to Castle Donington (3), Swadlincote (3C), Derby (5), Loughborough (10), and Coalville (11), Trent’s service 8 to Derby and their 60/61 to Hucknall and Mansfield, and Midland General’s B1 to Ripley, B2 to Cotmanhay, B3 to Alfreton, B4 to South Normanton, C5 to Alfreton, and C8 to Ilkeston. A further migrant was Midland Red’s X99 to Birmingham.

These services in total amounted to around 35% of Huntingdon Street’s traffic and their transfer made things far more manageable. But, as they say, nature abhors a vacuum and the return of peace in 1945 brought new problems. After six years of misery the general public wanted to travel and the space vacated by the Mount Street refugees was quickly commandeered by massive numbers of duplicates on the express services to the east and west coasts. In the early pre-war era Platform 1 was wholly occupied by Nottingham City Transport. Originally this area had played host to NCT services 19/22/25/25A, but the 19 to Lenton Abbey had been transferred to a street terminus on the Old Market Square (or “Slab Square” as it is universally known by locals) and the 22 to Hucknall had been eliminated at an early stage by an agreement with Trent. The remaining 25/25A circulars to Thackeray’s Lane were frequent but hardly justified their own platform.

Meanwhile Platform 2 was severely over-crowded at times of peak leisure travel. The problem was that Barton’s own high frequency 7/7A/8 to Epperstone/Calverton/Oxton had a continuous presence on the platform, which was also used by Barton’s twice daily service 9 to Skegness. A photograph taken in 1947 and used in several books shows a row of five brand-new Barton PD1A/Duple L55F double-deckers, all bound for Skegness on a single departure, completely blocking the platform with no local service vehicles in sight. Barton’s allocated platforms after the mass departure to Mount Street were numbers 2 and 3 (with the other independents using Platform 4), and Platform 3 could provide little relief as it was already full of Barton services heading across Trent Bridge to Melton Mowbray (2), Keyworth (6), Leicester (12), Ruddington (14), and the Vale of Belvoir villages (22/23/24/26). The northern half of the bus station could offer no alternative accommodation as it was already full of Midland General and Trent services along with a plethora of express routes.

As a partial solution Barton’s Skegness service was allowed on to Corporation turf at the rear end of Platform 1, with duplicates queuing alongside (but facing in the opposite direction) along Huntingdon Street itself. This proved to be a wise move as traffic soared to even greater heights in the late 1940s and early 1950s with Barton’s line-up of Skegness duplicates often reaching the northern end of the bus station with further vehicles waiting to emerge from the parking area next to Lammas Lodge. All of this traffic must have been good for the municipal coffers as shelters were finally erected on Huntingdon Street’s platforms in early 1949.

Two of South Notts’ Northern Counties bodied Lowlanders (82/82 SVO and 87 /FRR 87D) are seen here, driverless and completely blocking Platform 4. Parking discipline was never very good at Huntingdon Street! (John J Holmes)

Broad Marsh

An even bigger change was on the way. The Council had decided that two bus stations were no longer enough, especially in light of its decision to build a major new housing estate at Clifton to the south of the city. This would require many more new bus services and as these were to be operated jointly by NCT, West Bridgford UDC, and a privately owned operator (South Notts), the use of the Corporation’s carefully guarded street termini was unthinkable. On the other hand Huntingdon Street was now almost as full as it had been before the opening of Mount Street (which was also full and had overflowed into neighbouring side streets), so the Council bit the bullet and authorised the opening of a third bus station at Broad Marsh, to the south of the city centre.

It was ordained that this new development would accommodate all bus services leaving the city via Trent Bridge, but this soon caused rumblings of discontent from all concerned. The mass eviction to Mount Street had taken place during wartime, and it would have been unpatriotic to make too much of a fuss, but this was peacetime and there was talk of possible legal action by Barton and others if the Council attempted to send them to Broad Marsh against their will. A compromise was reached, with each operator being allowed to choose one service crossing Trent Bridge which could continue to be served from Huntingdon Street. Short workings and variations of those routes were also to be allowed to stay. Gash nominated both of their services to Newark, South Notts their workings towards Loughborough, Trent the 65/66 to Bunny and Loughborough, and Barton the 12 to Leicester. In the case of the latter three operators there was a reason for their choice of routes. Huntingdon Street was to the north of the city centre, and only 5 minutes walk away from Nottingham Victoria railway station. Regular train services connected this station to both Loughborough and Leicester, and if the competing bus services had been forced to move to Broad Marsh they would undoubtedly have lost some traffic to the trains.

The new Broad Marsh bus station opened in January 1952, and in addition to the entirely new services from the Clifton Estate became a haven for Barton’s services to Melton Mowbray, Keyworth, and the Vale of Belvoir, although for some unknown reason the Belvoir routes had a brief stay at Mount Street before transferring to Broad Marsh. A brand-new Barton service to Clifton via Ruddington (54) also used Broad Marsh, but their existing route to Ruddington (14) was allowed to stay at Huntingdon Street as it competed with Trent’s 65/66. After all of the departures Trent became the largest operator at Huntingdon Street, with Barton departures limited to the 7/7A/8 local services, the 12 to Leicester, the 14 to Ruddington, and the express routes to Skegness (9) and Llandudno (34). Despite this statistical fact, at any given time there were still far more Barton vehicles on the bus station than Trent ones. This anomaly was accounted for by the limitations of Huntingdon Street garage, across the road, which had no parking area of its own and used the bus station as a turn-out and layover facility. Most of the services transferred to Broad Marsh were still worked by Nottingham garage, either wholly or in part, and vehicles showing route numbers for the Vale of Belvoir cluster of routes could often be found alongside Lammas Lodge as late as the 1970s.

The Gash route to Newark via the main road was usually operated by double-deckers well into the 1970s, but here is their 36ft Leopard/Willowbrook saloon LO7 (YNN 650H) at Huntingdon Street to provide a little variety. (John J Holmes)

The Rise of the Shopping Centres

In the mid-1960s drastic changes came again. The City council decided that all of its bus stations should be situated next to shopping centres and sites were earmarked as an integral part of new city centre retail developments. The first of these schemes to be approved, Victoria Centre, was an ambitious plan to redevelop the site of Nottingham’s Victoria Railway Station. The station had been opened in 1900, jointly financed by the Great Central and Great Northern companies, and became the Nottingham halt for the GCR’s express services from Manchester and Sheffield to London (Marylebone). These lines competed directly with the Midland Railway’s services from their station at Carrington Street, to the south of the city centre, and by the 1960s the old GCR routes were seen as ripe for elimination by the infamous Dr Beeching. The London expresses came to an end in 1966, leaving only a six times daily service to Rugby operated by DMUs. It was a pitiful end for a station with 12 platforms, and the facility closed completely in September 1967. Demolition was swift, although the station clock tower on Milton Street survived, and work began almost immediately on the construction of the new shopping mall. The scale of the development was certainly impressive. As well as the retail units there were 26 storey flats above the centre, providing more than 400 homes, vast multi-level car parks, and a new (completely undercover) bus station.

Those of us who loved Huntingdon Street watched the new shopping centre rising from the ashes of the railway station with great trepidation, as its completion would surely spell the end of the neighbouring site. Fortunately I was spared the final rites as by 1970 I was the singer in a (semi-professional!) rock band, and musical commitments in Manchester at the weekends made visits to Nottingham, or anywhere else, few and far between. Huntingdon Street closed, without me to mourn it, in early 1972 (does anybody know the exact date?). My next journey to Nottingham, later in the same year, deposited me at the new Victoria Bus Station. It was horrible, in a Digbeth Coach Station sort of way but without the primitive charm, and was made even worse by the creeping advance of NBC poppy red and leaf green. I decided to take a look at the old site and was happy to discover that the parking ground by Lammas Lodge was still full of Barton vehicles. Barton rented this area from the City council until 1977 when their lease was terminated so that the site could be used as an enlarged surface car park. This was rather ironic as a much smaller surface parking area had previously existed at the northern end of the power station and alongside Platform 8. Despite having room for no more than 25 vehicles this had been supervised by a man in a hut. The development of a new Platform 9 in the late 1960s (and an increasing need for bus parking) had finally eliminated this facility. The Barton garage across the road survived until 1980 when most of its vehicles were moved back to Chilwell (from whence their predecessors had come way back in 1939).

The other two bus stations suffered similar fates. Redevelopment at Mount Street began in 1965 and the “traditional” bus station (I’m trying to be kind about it!) closed in 1968. For two years its services were scattered onto Maid Marian Way and other local thoroughfares before the completion of the new facility, another piece of nasty concrete modernism with no soul. More embarrassingly the shopping development adjacent to the new Mount Street Bus Station found it hard to find tenants (being separated from the rest of the city centre by a dual carriageway) and the entire place had that kind of virtually deserted futuristic look that made you expect an attack by Daleks. The bus companies didn’t like it much either. Barton gave it short shrift, moving their services to the new Broad Marsh within two years. Trent were next to go (in 1973), taking Midland Red’s X99 with them to Victoria. Mount Street became a Midland General mono-culture and closed in 1980, only ten years after its opening. It was not replaced and the remaining services went to Victoria. The new version of Broad Marsh (now attached to a shopping centre of the same name) opened in October 1971 and was an improvement for everyone except bus photographers, the previous pleasing skyline in the background of their Broad Marsh shots having been replaced by artificial lighting and a multi-storey car park where the sky should be. My fondness for the new Broad Marsh might have been influenced by events in my own life. In September 1973 I moved to Nottingham to be the singer in a new band, and a year later met my first wife in the city. We married in November (eight weeks after our first meeting) and – being impoverished – used a South Notts Lowlander on the Clifton Estate service to transport the wedding party from the registry office to our cheap and cheerful reception at a friend’s flat in Wilford. Well-wishers ensured that there was an abundance of confetti on Broad Marsh Bus Station.

As always seems to happen with my articles, this one has run well beyond its originally intended length. Part Three will draw this reminiscence to a close with a platform-by-platform survey of Huntingdon Street’s attractions between 1964 and 1972. If you have any good quality photographs taken at the bus station during those years I’d be delighted to see them and include them.

Neville Mercer
09/2015

To read part three Click Here

At the age of 11, like most healthy children, I started lying to my parents. I was allowed the freedom to travel to Manchester Airport (for the planes) or the city centre (for the buses), but any travels further afield had to be negotiated and in all cases I had to be home by 6pm. This did not fit in with my enthusiasm for buses as friends had already seduced me with tales of far-flung destinations such as Nottingham’s rightly famous Huntingdon Street Bus Station. In December 1964 I finally reached this exotic site at the extreme range of a believable lie (“the bus hasn’t turned up at Ringway, so I won’t be home until sevenish..”), It was well worth the risk.

I’d previously used the X2 limited stop service, operated jointly by North Western and Trent, to visit Bakewell and Matlock. The relatively early first departure (08:15 from Manchester’s Lower Mosley St Bus Station) made these intermediate locations “do-able” within my time limits, but Nottingham was more than three hours away. Even four hours in Nottingham would mean an arrival back at Lower Mosley St at 18:39 and then I had to get back to suburban Sale on MCTD’s service 47. It added up to seven and a half hours of travelling for four hours at the other end. To any non-enthusiast it sounds a little strange, but I used to do the journey quite regularly in 1965 -1969, often continuing to Chilwell, Gotham, or Newark during my four hours in Nottinghamshire. Wherever I was ultimately headed a stop at Huntingdon Street was always an added bonus.

The route from Manchester to Nottingham was equally fascinating, with vehicles from Hulley, Silver Service, and Sheffield JOC visible in Bakewell and those of Silver Service, East Midland, and Midland General in Matlock. More Midland General buses could be noted in Ripley, and then in Ilkeston came the first whiff of the Barton empire with their high frequency services to the nearby Kirk Hallam housing estate. The 08:15 from Manchester finally arrived in Huntingdon Street at around 11:25 (15 minutes early), most crews tearing up the timetable after picking up their final passengers in Matlock. The vehicle (usually a 41 seat Alexander Z type “Highlander” by 1964 – 66) would then park up opposite Platform 4, alongside the buildings almost universally known to bus enthusiasts as “The Tram Depot”. Which they weren’t (and never had been), but we’ll get to that shortly. Before we move on I should explain that Millstone Lane (Huntingdon St to be) actually ran from the NNW to the SSE, but for the purposes of this article will be treated as if it ran North to South and the cross streets from east to west. It’s easier for all of us.

History and Geography

The area of Nottingham where the future bus station would be sited was more than a little bit rough in the Victorian era. The part of the city bounded by Millstone Lane (renamed Huntingdon Street in 1931), King Edward Street, St Ann’s Well Road, Curzon Street, and St Marks Street, was occupied by a mixture of back-to-back tenement buildings and low-rent commercial premises thrown up in a hurry during the Industrial Revolution. The land which became the southern half of the bus station (platforms 1-4) was previously taken up by no less than five dead-end streets of densely populated terraces leading east from Millstone Lane. At their eastern end they abutted against similar housing on four much longer terraced streets leading northwards from King Edward St/St Ann’s Well Road. Running east-west at the northern end of this parcel of land was Curzon Place, which originally ran through from Curzon Street to Millstone Lane until the western half was eliminated and became the central driveway between the northern and southern halves of the bus station.

Poor quality commercial buildings including warehousing, some fairly ramshackle shops, and two pubs occupied the western side of Millstone Lane for the full length of the future bus station. On the eastern side of Millstone Lane, to the north of Curzon Place and to the south of the buildings on the next east-west road (St Marks St), a recreation ground or small park was provided for the benighted tenants of the local slums. This area was created in the late 1850s by a private benefactor who gave the land to the City council. Funds were also provided for the construction of a “lodge” at the northern end of the recreation ground with a clock tower, a kitchen for the production of drinks and snacks, a storage area for tables and chairs (which were deployed in appropriate weather conditions to the paved area outside of the lodge which included a scenic fountain), and residential accommodation for the park-keeper and his family. This was completed in 1860 and known as Lammas Lodge.

Redevelopment is so last century

A major slum clearance scheme removed all of the terraced housing on the streets at the southern end of the future bus station in the late 1890s, the residents being moved to more hygienic estates further out from the city centre. The long dead-end streets heading northwards gave way to an edifice symbolic of the new technological age. Nottingham was in the process of electrifying its tramways and power was needed, both for this purpose and for use in the adjacent residential areas along St Ann’s Well Rd. The north-south terraces were replaced by the St Ann’s Well Road Electricity Generating Station (aka “The Tram Depot”), opened in 1902 along with the electrified line which passed its front doors, The architecture of the two original buildings was identical to that of the city’s new tram sheds at Sherwood (opened in 1900), which may have been the source of later confusion about the buildings’ original purpose. Despite the architectural similarities the St Ann’s Well Road facility contained motor generation units for Direct Current power production rather than anything on bogies. A third building was added shortly before the First World War, adjoining the northern half of the original two structures on their western side. This was built to house the ancillary (road) vehicles needed to maintain the city’s tramways.

Other redevelopment work was taking place in the area. On the south side of King Edward St the Salvation Army built an impressive structure known as The William Booth Memorial Halls in 1915, commemorating the organisation’s founder who had died three years earlier. The building’s bell tower, with its distinctive dome at the top, provided background scenery for many a photograph taken at the bus station’s southern end in years to come.

At this point in time the southern half of the future bus station was vacant land alongside the power station, while the northern half was still a recreation ground although the population it was designed to serve had already been transplanted elsewhere. Things remained in this state until the mid-1920s when the City council decided to redevelop the entire area. The western side of Millstone Lane, between King Edward St and Kent Street (the next side road heading west) was then designated as the site of a new Central Market. This was a very large oblong building with Millstone Lane on one of its short sides. Its longer side took up the entire length of Kent St to its junction with Glasshouse St, the next north-south thoroughfare to the west alongside Victoria railway station. The new market opened to the public in 1928.

Photographer unknown – this image is an enlargement from an uncredited 10 x 8 print I bought in a Nottingham junk-shop about 30 years ago.

In this mid 1930s aerial shot Huntingdon Street is running from south (top right) to north (bottom left). Slightly to the left of centre at the top are the William Booth Memorial Halls with the distinctive bell-tower, situated on the corner of King Edward St and Bath St, and a Nottingham Corporation trolleybus is visible turning into Bath St. At this junction King Edward St continued to the left as St Ann’s Well Road. The power station buildings are visible on the left hand side of the photograph, the shorter one alongside the bus station being built after the other two to house maintenance vehicles. By the time of this photograph it was already in its second incarnation as a covered municipal car park. The remains of Curzon Place are out of shot, but the north (bottom) end of the power station and the dividing driveway between the two halves of the bus station indicate its original alignment. Just out of shot on the left hand side is the distinctive Lammas Lodge. On the right hand side of the photograph the extremely large building is the Central Market, bounded by King Edward St, Huntingdon St, and Kent St which divides it from Huntingdon House to the north. The change of roof-line level in the middle of the Kent St side of Huntingdon House marks the site of the Dutton’s bus garage, later used by Trent. Continuing downwards on Huntingdon St, Rick Street is on the side of Huntingdon House closest to the bottom of the photograph. Across the road a vacant lot is just visible at bottom left. This helps to date the photograph as this lot became the site of the new Barton Transport building and garage in 1939.

And now (you might be glad to hear!) we finally get to the bus station. Until 1929 Nottingham had no official municipal bus station. Most operators (including the council itself) used street stands while others clung to their private parking grounds to avoid the need for licences from the council’s Watch Committee. The bus industry, however, was booming by the late 1920s and a similar rise in the number of goods vehicles and private cars entering the city was contributing to severe congestion. Shortly after the formal opening of the market the council announced the establishment of a new “Central Bus Station” on the opposite side of Millstone Lane. The derelict land alongside the power station became its southern half (platforms 1-4), the western half of Curzon Place was closed to traffic and became its central east-west driveway, and the redundant recreation ground was paved over to become the northern half of the bus station, consisting of platforms 5-8 and a parking area to the east which stretched from the power station’s northern edge over to Lammas Lodge (which survived the elimination of the park it had been built to serve). Pedestrian access from the truncated Curzon Place to Millstone Lane was provided by a public footpath which skirted the northern edge of the new bus station site, passing Lammas Lodge. The end of the surviving half of Curzon Place will be familiar from many photographs taken in the bus parking area. To the south, adjacent to the power station on St Ann’s Well Road was a small car park at the back of the New Empress cinema (a bingo hall in later years). The original Empress on King Edward St had been demolished to make way for the Central Market and the new site offered in part compensation. On the north side of Curzon Place a fairly modest two storey building had a large sign on its gable end proclaiming it to be the premises of the Nottingham Butchers Products & Casing Co. In pre-war years it had been owned by a dairy products wholesaler called Colton.

The new bus station opened in late 1929, but despite extensive research over the years I have never been able to pin down the exact date. Any offers? Almost all of the non-municipal bus services had relocated to the bus station before the end of the year. Barton was particularly enthusiastic, having previously used three separate sites scattered around the city centre, and the Barton family sometimes claimed credit for the creation of the new facility as their founder had first suggested the idea in 1926. To be honest, it seems doubtful that nobody thought of the idea before him. The establishment of the bus station gave further impetus to the redevelopment of Millstone Lane. In 1930 work began on a major new office building on the block between Kent St and Rick Street (the next side street to the north). This was completed in 1931 and named Huntingdon House to reflect the new name of the street which it stood upon. The council had redeveloped Millstone Lane itself by merging it with St Michael’s Road (to the north) and Cross Street (to the south) to create what would later be termed an “inner city relief road” under the new name of Huntingdon Street. The bus terminal continued to be known as the Central Bus Station until 1943 when the opening of a second facility at Mount Street required a more specific title for the first.

Trent Motor Traction became the first tenant of Huntingdon House, using the ground floor unit at the corner of Huntingdon St and Kent St as a booking office. Other tenants were slower to arrive due to the economic turndown of the Great Depression, and for many years the entire frontage of the building carried “Trent” signs above the unrented ground floor units as if it was wholly theirs. By the late 1930s tenants had been found and introduced their own shop signs. Meanwhile Trent had also secured a small garage in the area by the purchase of Dutton’s Unity Service in 1935. This brought a frequent service to Sutton-in-Ashfield (which became Trent route number 84) and the lease of Dutton’s garage on Kent Street, facing the Central Market. Despite having an existing (and much larger) Nottingham garage at Manvers Street, ten minutes walk away, Trent retained the Kent Street premises until at least the 1960s.

Trent’s new premises in Huntingdon House and Kent Street seemed to spur two other operators into action. Barton built their own premises (including offices and a garage) on Huntingdon Street between Rick Street and the next side road to the north, Howard Street, and this opened in 1939. Not to be outdone, Robin Hood Coaches moved their head office and garage to new premises in Huntingdon St in the same year, occupying the site on the far side of Howard St. In the kind of dreadful terminology used by present-day urban planners, Huntingdon St had become “The Bus Company Quarter” with the offices and garages of all three operators visible from the bus station.

In Part Two of this article I will be completing the history of the bus station between 1939 and 1964 and then giving a platform by platform tour of the Huntingdon Street I knew from personal experience. If you can contribute any photographs taken at the bus station between 1964 and 1971 they would be very much appreciated.

Neville Mercer
09/2015

To read part two Click Here

15/09/15 – 10:36

Very interesting, Neville, although I’ve never been to Nottingham; indeed large, or even small bus stations seem to have eluded my life, apart from Preston. Were they more of a Northern thing? There is some information and some more photos at this link: http://nottstalgia.com/forums/

Chris Hebbron

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17/09/15 – 06:08

Great article, Neville. I’m looking forward to the next bit.
Well, Mr Hebbron, I have at least managed to visit Nottingham on two occasions, one a school trip to Trent Bridge and the other for a cousin’s wedding. No, young Sir, bus stations are not just to be found in ‘northern’ areas. Amesbury, in the depths of Wiltshire, has one! Other places in this area include Fareham, Gosport and Portsmouth. Lymington and Salisbury have closed in the last couple of years. Down in the south west, Tiverton has one.

Pete Davies

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18/09/15 – 05:59

I could have put it more clearly, Pete, but I was really concentrating on large bus stations, like Nottingham and that awesome video of the last bus departure at Sheffield Bus Station in the 80’s! Portsmouth’s modern one is a shadow of the municipal(trolley)buses just parked in the road adjacent to it up, until harbour reclamation made the new station possible. Southdown’s was just a row of buses along the sea front at South Parade Pier. No bus stations and no conveniences at all! Gosport/Fareham/Guildford/Pool Valley, Brighton were modest, by comparison. Even today, Gloucester has one with about 10 bays and Cheltenham a strange half-hearted one rooted in the late 1940’s, minus any facilities, in a cramped semi-circle only half-used and other buses stopping elsewhere in an adjacent street. Finally, London had certain places where routes conglomerated by ending/passing by, that you could call termini, but not actual bus stations that I could recall up to the 60’s and some that I’m still aware of have not changed. Victoria Rail Station forecourt was/is probably the one exception.
It raises the question; what is the most outstandingly good bus station, architecturally, that anyone is aware of, even if it has now been demolished? Something of St Pancras or even impressive art-deco standard might be asking too much, but we some of us must have come across something that stands out. Worst ones can also be mentioned. My worst one was the Midland Red one which formed part of Birmingham’s Bull Ring, a vast semi-underground edifice with no windows, sparse fluorescent lights about 30 feet above the ground, dangerously narrow islands and a permanently wet floor and damp atmosphere. it rarely seemed to have more than three or four buses in there, although it probably had capacity for about thirty. It’s gone now, unlamented and forgotten by all, even by me, until a few minutes ago! Will I ever recover from this sudden nightmare memory???

Chris Hebbron

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18/09/15 – 10:17

No worries, Chris. Go and sit in a darkened room and keep taking the tablets.

Pete Davies

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The north v south divide ?
Hants and Dorset had a large bus station in Bournemouth, with all the facilities to be expected, following the 1959 rebuild even a ‘proper’ restaurant. H&D also had bus stations ‘with facilities’ such as toilets, enquiry offices and the like at Poole (although the actual stops there were along the road, rather than on a dedicated piece of land), Southampton and Winchester. Further to the west, bus stations ‘with facilities’ come to mind at Taunton, Exeter, Plymouth, Camborne, Truro in the Southern/Western National area; to the north of the H&D area, Bristol Omnibus had stations at Bristol, Bath, and Gloucester ( larger than the present arrangement); whilst Wilts and Dorset had bus stations at Salisbury, Andover, Basingstoke and Amesbury; to the east, Southdown at Chichester and Lewes come to mind. There were others, of course.
Being from the ‘south’, on visits to the ‘north’ my impression was rather different to Neville’s !! On making a first visit to Dinnington, (south Yorkshire) and the timetable saying ‘bus station’, I looked for a structure similar to those found in my ‘home’ area. Eventually I found the bus shelter (or was it 2) that were the relevant location. From memory, the bus stations in some ‘Woollen District’ towns, like Dewsbury and, I think, Heckmondwike,were of the same style. In Sheffield, Pond Street in the 1960s looked rather like a collection of huts – not an ‘imposing facility’ suitable for a large city. Similarly, on the other side of the Pennines, Lower Moseley Street or Piccadilly in Manchester also seemed like a set of bus shelters – again not a ‘proper bus station’ as I was used to find in H&D territory !!
In truth, I think there were some good bus stations ‘up north’ and also ‘down south’ – and some pretty dismal provision in both as well. (in the H&D area, Woolston was pretty sparse!).

As to ‘iconic’, maybe the 1930s architecture of the original part of Bournemouth’s bus station would be a candidate – image attached is from a commercial postcard of the period in my collection, whilst the post rebuild horseshoe platform worked well – no reversing from sawtooth bays, and a continuous sheltered walkway / waiting area for passengers, separated from moving buses.

Peter Delaney

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19/09/15 – 06:21

With reference to Chris Hebbrons comments about the best and worst Bus Stations. I recently obtained pictures of the ‘New’ Bus Station at Feethams, Darlington, Co Durham, operated by United Automobile Services Ltd. This was opened in 1962 and replaced open stands previously situated in the Leadyard.
The new Bus Station when opened was completely roofed over and had a central heating system, with 15 departure platforms. A ventilation system kept the air, fresh and free from exhaust fumes, at least this was in the early years.
It quickly gained a reputation, for being a somewhat ‘smelly and unpleasant place’, as the building doubled as a Garage, and maintenance facility, with a workshop with 3 pits for inspection and repairs, as well as the Bus Station.
Passenger facilities consisted of an Enquiry Office, a Left Luggage Office, Toilets, and a Cafè. Above which were the offices of the Area Traffic Superintendent, and his staff. 60 vehicles could be housed in the Garage.
The ‘Darlington Bus Wars’ after de-regulation, meant that the use of the Bus Station decreased to mainly National Express, and Excursion, and Holiday coaches, with Service buses increasingly using street stands.
After numerous planning applications were submitted to the Borough Council (who owned the land and building) it granted planning permission for a Hotel, Leisure Facilities, with various Restaurants and Quick food establishments, and a Multiplex Cinema.
After serving the travelling public of Darlington for 47 years, demolition took place in 2009, and the land was used as a Car Park until building commenced in 2014.

Stephen Howarth

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19/09/15 – 06:22

My own recollections of Huntingdon Street are limited to a couple of return trips I made from Newark by W.Gash when visiting RAF Swinderby on an ATC summer camp in 1961. My pictures of Gash Daimlers taken in Huntingdon Street may be found elsewhere on OBP – the Freeline shot clearly shows the William Booth Memorial Hall in the background. In terms of sheer variety, this must surely have been one of the most engrossing bus stations in the land. Chris H has raised the question of nominating the worst bus stations. Yes, I agree about Birmingham Bull Ring, but Northampton Greyfriars was every bit its equal in its representation of Hell. Others that come to mind include the one at Reading, and the abomination at Corby (with its ineradicable aroma of reprocessed late night liquid refreshment). Of the better ones, I always liked the old bus stations at Aldershot and Guildford Farnham Road, both now gone under “development”, surely one of the most misapplied words of the age.

Roger Cox

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19/09/15 – 06:23

I took a walk round to Huntingdon Street a couple of year’s ago: the Barton depot was still recognisable (and, taking out the space occupied by the ground-floor booking offices, surprisingly small), the Robin Hood depot still existed, and I’m pretty sure Huntingdon House was there – although I was looking for a bus depot as I didn’t realise the Trent depot was down a side street. I can’t remember what was on the bus station side. I’m in Nottingham in a couple of weeks time, so I can have another look with the benefit of Neville’s article to guide me . . . or, as I’ve just realised, I could do it all tonight with the help of Google Streetview.
Regarding YWD bus stations: Dewsbury and Cleckheaton were (at least until they fell into decline in the 1970s) pretty substantial affairs with crew rest-rooms, tobacconists, and enquiry offices; Batley and Ossett were pretty grim, being a few islands of pre-cast concrete shelters, although Batley did have an enquiry office until the mid-70s(?); but Heckmondwike never has had a bus station.
Nelson bus station reminded me, in one respect at least, of Bull Ring Bus Station – narrow platforms without any railings, and in Nelson’s case serving both sides . . . at least, although it was under a multi-storey car park, it wasn’t as fume-ridden as Bull Ring. A new bus station has replaced the Nelson facility, but the old bus station still exists preserved exactly as the day it closed.

Philip Rushworth

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20/09/15 – 06:47

There was more than one Nelson bus station, Philip! Down in South Wales there is also a Nelson which was once served by Caerphilly, West Mon, Pontypridd and Gelligaer as well as Red and White. It was quite a small affair and built on the site of the Pontypridd to Nelson & Llancaiach railway which once ran in a cutting here.
As you can see from the photograph the bus station was a fairly basic affair and despite the impressive list of operators not actually all that busy – the four municipalities had all been involved in the purchase of local operator Commercial Motor Services of Treharris. The joint operation that ensued saw some of them only appearing on certain days of the week. By the time of my photo (1978) it was served by Rhymney Valley, Islwyn and National Welsh.

David Beilby

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31/10/15 – 08:16

The question about large bus stations being largely a northern feature is interesting.
To a large extent it is a result of the way population is spread around, but there is also to some extent the question of how individual local authorities reacted to providing for bus services.
The south of England has generally fewer really large towns and cities where a large bus station might be required. Bristol, the largest, managed with on street stops for local services, and essentially all the larger places were surrounded with rural areas where lower density of traffic meant that even quite extensive networks could be catered for with relatively small bus stations or a series of separated on-street locations.
By contrast, consider the number of places served from somewhere like Pond Street in Sheffield and their populations, with high frequency services and large passenger volumes.
Of larger bus stations in the south, Bournemouth has already been mentioned, but the one large one that comes to mind – partly because it was used by city services as well as longer distance ones is Cardiff, illustrated as attached in 1969.

Alan Murray-Rust

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02/11/15 – 06:33

I paid a visit to Nottingham a couple of weeks ago, and had a poke around the Huntingdon Street area – it’s eerily deserted these days, hard to think of it as a public transport hub really. Huntingdon House is still standing, but completely anonymous (I suppose it might be used for office accommodation), as are the Barton and Robin Hood depots – last time I visited (about 5 years ago) the doors to the Barton Depot were open, and behind the elaborate frontage/offices it is really quite a small depot; the doorways to Robin Hood depot have been modified to take metal roller-shutters – it might still be in use, but there were no signs of life – but they weren’t overly wide and access onto the narrowish public road must have been tight as vehicle sizes increased. Trent’s Kent St depot has been demolished, but the replacement building appears to follow the same roof-line, and seems to have a mews/carriage-entrance roughly where the depot entrance would have been.
Neville’s article got me thinking – did many towns boast three bus stations? Well, I think Guildford did until the current Friary Centre bus station was built (and am I correct in thinking that the mixture of end-on bays and that line of run-through bays at the “top end” [the ones that look a like an after-thought] were a result of LCBS drivers refusing to use the end-on loading bays?), Glasgow? Liverpool? Manchester? all might fit the bill . . . Leeds, Newcastle, and Scarborough could muster four, if you include the coach stations in Leeds and Newcastle (which in Leeds’s case also serviced the coastal limited-stop services). Any more for four?/advance on four??
Didn’t Leigh boast two bus stations at one time – one LUT, one municipal? Was that the smallest town with more than one bus station??

Philip Rushworth

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03/11/15 – 06:37

Another town with three bus stations was Doncaster. North andSouth bus stations were both underneath multi storey car parks whilst the favourite of many enthusiasts was Christchurch , the home of a number of the many Doncaster independent operators.

Andrew Charles

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03/11/15 – 14:55

Three Doncaster Bus Stations: up to a point, Charles but you need to go further back! For many years there were Marshgate and North Bridge in the north and Waterdale in the South. Christchurch was really a streetside bus terminus, I think, in which it joined a few other spots around town used by the Corporation. Only North Bridge was wired for tracklesses (to use the local parlance). The revealing thing is that Doncaster did not have north-south through routes as the A1 was so slow through the town that you might as well walk it. Only later were bus stations built for troglodytes.

Joe

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04/11/15 – 06:31

All of this talk about Doncaster! In the really dim and distant past, the opposite end of the Trent 64/East Midland 36 from Nottingham Huntingdon Street, was Doncaster Glasgow Paddocks. Where was that, and how did it fit into this plethora of bus stations?!

Stephen Ford

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04/11/15 – 06:31

Before the present Friary bus station, Guildford had two bus stations, both of which were opened in 1950. The first was at Onslow Street, a basic tarmac area with minimal facilities, next to the old 1901 Dennis Factory now known as Rodboro Buildings. Onslow Street was intended to be a temporary bus station, and a more substantial facility was constructed just the other side of the River Wey at Farnham Road, the two being linked by a pedestrian footbridge. Onslow Street was supervised by London Transport whose departures from there predominated. Farnham Road was managed by Aldershot & District whose extensive network served much of local Guildford and radiated beyond into West Surrey and Hampshire. In the event the intended expansion of Farnham Road never took place, and Onslow Street remained in use right up to the time when both bus stations were engulfed in the brutalist new bridge construction that now defaces central Guildford as part of a misconceived gyratory system. Whilst the old Friary Meux brewery site was being redeveloped as (inevitably) a covered shopping mall, buses were dispersed to other streets, mainly Commercial Road (the location of the current Friary bus station) and Millbrook, and some A&D routes ran from the much reduced Farnham Road site for a while. There is now talk of closing Friary bus station (to extend the Friary shopping centre) and relocating public transport to Bedford Road, away from the commercial centre of the town. As ever, the lowly bus passenger barely registers on the social scale with local authorities.

Roger Cox

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04/11/15 – 16:02

There’s a poser Stephen: some call it Waterdale Bus Station, others Glasgow Paddocks. I think that Waterdale Bus Station was in Glasgow Paddocks, which were originally fields. Long distance coaches such as United to London left from Waterdale itself, opposite, but this was less a bus station, more a parking area. Any advance…?

Joe

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Phillip Rushworth asks whether anywhere had more than four bus stations.
In fact, for a time until the early sixties, Leeds had five:-
Starting from the Wellington Street Coach Station 1) facility which, as he states, serviced express coach services and certain West Yorkshire long distance bus routes to the East Coast, and proceeding in a clockwise direction:-
2) Rockingham Street Bus Station which serviced a few LCT routes to the north and west of the city.
3) Vicar Lane Bus Station which was used by all WYRCC services into the city apart from service 34 to Otley, and Ilkley. United Automobile, EYMS and Sam Ledgards buses could also be found here on the services they shared with West Yorkshire.
4) Central Bus Station, used by LCT for all terminating routes from the east of the city and most from the north and west. Additionally, this is where T Burrows and Son, Kippax & District and South Yorkshire Motors routes started, most West Riding Autos began and where you could find the occasional Yorkshire Traction or Sheffield “C” fleet bus on route 67 which they shared with West Riding, to the latter named city.
5) Finally, there was the Cross York Street Bus Station used solely by West Riding on their “red” routes (tram replacement services) to Rothwell, Wakefield and Kettlethorpe.
I’m not sure which of (2) or (5) above Philip forgot. In fairness, the Cross York Street establishment was purpose built and, though small, adequate facilities were close by whereas the Rockingham Street site was no more than a street with barriers at four(?) stops where crews took their rest.
Finally, could I nominate Talbot Road Bus Station in Blackpool as Britains worst Bus Station? Purpose built with a car park above, it was dark and gloomy, seemed to retain all fumes produced (not just from the buses!) unsafe for passengers who were supposed to wait along one side of the ground floor whilst buses drove in, parked and unloaded before loading, and had a resident flock of unhouse-trained pigeons and seagulls.

Steve Crompton

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09/11/15 – 06:49

Steve, it was Rockingham St that I had overlooked. So that’s five for Leeds – not to forget the YWD/Hebble routes that were quarantined to the Queen St/Sovereign St areas . . . and, as you mentioned, the Cookridge St stance for the Ledgard/WY services towards Otley through Bramhope.

Philip Rushworth