A potted history

zoom

The Horse Bus, c. 1900: Horse bus with passengers and driver in New Church Road, Hove.

Image reproduced with kind permission from Brighton and Hove in Pictures by Brighton and Hove City Council

zoom

Thomas Tilling Bus, c. 1914: Open topped double decker Tilling bus with driver, conductor and passengers parked near Brighton Station.

Image reproduced with kind permission from Brighton and Hove in Pictures by Brighton and Hove City Council

zoom

Southdown Open-top Omnibus, c. 1920: A Southdown open-top omnibus, running the 31 service from Brighton to Portsmouth via Worthing, Littlehampton, Bognor and Chichester. On the right a conductor can be seen with his characteristic leather bag and ticket-issuing machine. There are advertisements for Gales of Bognor and Reynolds and Co. house furnishers of Bognor. Southdown Motor Services Ltd was formed in 1915 and used Madeira Drive as a terminus until 1929 when Pool Valley bus station was created by Brighton Corporation.

Image reproduced with kind permission from Brighton and Hove in Pictures by Brighton and Hove City Council

zoom

Hove Corporation Open-top Omnibus, 1914: A Hove Corporation open-top Omnibus using the Cedes Gearless Trackless Trolley System. This early trolley-bus was on trial by Hove Corporation in August 1914, and ran from Goldstone Villas, along Blatchington Road and George Street to Church Road. However, plans to develop a trolley-bus network were halted by the First World War and not resumed until 1935.

Image reproduced with kind permission from Brighton and Hove in Pictures by Brighton and Hove City Council

zoom

Trams and Trolley Buses, 1939: Trams and trolley buses at the terminus in the Steine just after the introduction of trolley buses and prior to the trams being phased out.

Image reproduced with kind permission from Brighton and Hove in Pictures by Brighton and Hove City Council

zoom

Bus Towing a Gas Producer, c. 1940s: Bus running the 13B service to North Moulscombe (now usually spelt Moulsecoomb). From 1943 several buses operated with trailers producing gas from coal, which was used to run a gas turbine engine to save use of electricity or petrol. Ahead, a trolley bus can be seen.

Image reproduced with kind permission from Brighton and Hove in Pictures by Brighton and Hove City Council

Please note that this text is an extract from a reference work written in 1990.  As a result, some of the content may not reflect recent research, changes and events.

a) HORSE-BUSES: The town’s first regular horse-bus service connected the Kemp Town estate to Brighton Station from 11 May 1840, the first day of operation of the railway in Brighton. This route was later extended to the Cliftonville Inn in Hove, and by the 1870s several other east-west routes were operating. Services then expanded considerably with additional routes to Preston village, Preston Barracks, Stanford Avenue and Port Hall Road.
On 12 September 1884 most companies in the area amalgamated to form the Brighton, Hove and Preston United Omnibus Company (the ‘United Company’) which operated with 30 buses and 150 horses from stables and garages in Conway Street, Hove; from additional stables in Belfast Street, Hove, and Gloucester Place; and from a stable and coach works in Upper St James’s Street. The double-decked vehicles, which usually had seating for twenty-six passengers, were pulled by two horses and ran at five- or ten-minute intervals. {50}

b) INTRODUCTION of MOTOR-BUSES: The withdrawal of horse-buses commenced in the early 1900s with the advent of the new motor-buses. Tilley’s horse-buses ceased operating on the introduction of the corporation’s tram service in 1901, and the United Company, which ran the first motor-bus on 24 December 1903 from Hove Town Hall to Castle Square, replaced horses on the Kemp Town route in April 1904. By 1913 the United Company was operating six motor routes with both single- and double-decked vehicles, but still ran four horse routes until 8 December 1916 when the last horse-bus ran from Carlisle Road, Hove, to Brighton Station. (In 1976 a Brighton double-decker motor-bus of 1905, the oldest known in existence, was being restored. {123})

c) ELECTRIC TRACTION EXPERIMENTS: In 1909 the United Company successfully experimented with four battery-driven buses. Although some difficulties were experienced on hills, twelve vehicles were operated the following year from a garage in Montague Place.
In November 1910 the United Company also made plans to use trolley-buses and promoted a Bill in Parliament for routes from Worthing to Rottingdean, but the corporations of both Brighton and Hove responded by promoting their own Bills for municipal operations and these were passed in 1912 as the Brighton and Hove Corporation Acts. Brighton Corporation borrowed a trolley-vehicle from Leeds and a ran a test route firstly along the length of London Road at the end of December 1913, and then on the Ditchling Road, Preston Drove and Beaconsfield Villas tramway route the following month. The bus, which also underwent trials with Hove Corporation, proved a success and negotiated the hills quite easily, but further plans for trolley-bus operation were dropped because of the First World War. {55}

d) FORMATION of SOUTHDOWN: On 1 January 1915, the Worthing Motor Services Company, the London and South Coast Haulage Company, and the excursion services of the Brighton, Hove and Preston United Omnibus Company were amalgamated into a single undertaking which was formally established as Southdown Motor Services Ltd on 2 June 1915. The new company, which was formed as a reaction to government policy during World War One, operated out of the Steine Street garage which had been used since 1909 by the Worthing company. It also acquired eleven buses from the United Company on the condition that the Brighton and Hove areas would not be worked.
Southdown grew steadily, building a new garage at Freshfield Road in 1916 and another at the bottom of Edward Street in 1925. The green-liveried buses used Madeira Drive as a terminus until July 1929 when the corporation provided Pool Valley as a more convenient bus station. The Steine Street  premises were used as a coach station from 1920 until about 1970 but the site is now occupied by Dolphin Mews. {52}

e) ARRIVAL of TILLINGS and GENERAL EXPANSION: In 1915 the long-established Thomas Tilling Ltd of London entered the local omnibus scene by operating a route from Portslade Station to Castle Square, although no local fares were permitted within Brighton. The following year, on 22 November 1916, the newcomer acquired the United Company together with its aging fleet for £44,000, and Tilling’s Brighton and Hove omnibus section was formed. The forty-one petrol, twelve electric and eight horse vehicles of the United Company were duly replaced by modern motor vehicles in a red and cream livery, each open-topped and carrying forty-three passengers. The Southdown agreement was renegotiated with a new allocation of routes; Tillings were granted service nos.1-7, several of which still partly operate over their original routes.
Services expanded in the 1920s and ’30s as new suburbs were developed, and Tillings acquired the Brighton Downs Company in October 1926 to provide a service to the new Woodingdean estate. In 1930 they introduced a fleet of covered double-deck buses, and two years later opened a new garage in Whitehawk Road, selling off the premises in Montague Place. A new regulatory body, the South-East Traffic Commissioners, was established on 1 April 1931 with responsibility for the issue of route licences, at which time Tillings ceased making their annual contribution of about £3,000 to the corporation for road maintenance.

f) BRIGHTON, HOVE AND DISTRICT OMNIBUS COMPANY: On 2 November 1935 Tillings established the Brighton, Hove and District Omnibus Company (hereinafter ‘B.H.D.’) to run their Brighton services, although it was still managed from London. Initially some buses changed to an all-cream livery but they soon reverted to red and cream except for the no.17 open-top sea-front service which first ran on 10 April 1936.

g) BRIGHTON CORPORATION BUSES and POOLING: In 1938 the Brighton Corporation (Transport) Act was passed, authorising a corporation trolley-bus operation (see below) and requiring the pooling of the various undertakings from 1 April 1939 in order to improve the service to the town. The corporation’s own motor-bus service started on that date, but their routes were restricted to the county borough only while Southdown were given permission to work those parts of ‘Greater Brighton’ added in 1928, including Patcham and Rottingdean. The corporation buses also adopted a red and cream livery, although with the borough arms to distinguish them. All buses bore the title ‘Brighton, Hove and District Transport’.

h) TROLLEY-BUSES: The idea of operating trolley-buses, experimented with before the First World War, was revived when two vehicles were borrowed and run experimentally around the Level for a brief period in December 1935 and January 1936. Following this successful trial the corporation promoted a Bill to replace the aging tramway system; it was rejected by the House of Lords, but an amended Bill requiring greater co-ordination between rival companies was accepted by a town poll and became the Brighton Corporation (Transport) Act of 1938. The first public trolley-buses ran on the no.48 route on 1 May 1939, replacing tram route L from Old Steine to Preston Barracks, and the whole system was formally inaugurated on 1 June 1939 when service nos.26 and 46 were introduced along Ditchling Road, Preston Drove and Beaconsfield Villas, and the no.40A route via New England Road to Brighton Station.
Operating cleanly, quietly and efficiently, the trolley-buses proved to be very popular with the public. Where the routes diverged the points of the overhead lines were operated electrically from the driver’s cab, the setting being indicated by advance warning arrows. Buses also carried long poles for reconnecting the lines when necessary. {54,55}

j) WARTIME OPERATION: The Second World War brought many restrictions to bus operations in the town. Some vehicles were lent to other towns, while others were commandeered for transporting evacuees; those that remained had their interior and exterior lighting severely restricted, resulting in many accidents, and the livery was changed to ‘battleship grey’ from October 1942. In order to save fuel a coal-burning gas-turbine and petrol bus was introduced in November 1939 but it partially exploded at Patcham in November 1940; nevertheless, several buses operated with trailing gas producers from 1943.

k) POST-WAR TROLLEY-BUS EXPANSION and DEMISE: The war brought a halt to trolley-bus expansion plans and B.H.D.’s trolley-vehicles were mothballed until 1945 when they entered service under the auspices of the corporation. Trolley routes were then expanded from 1946 until the route mileage reached 14.54 miles in 1951. However, following the 1948 nationalisation of electricity supplies Brighton’s trolley-buses no longer operated from the corporation’s own supply, and as operating costs rose the council’s transport committee recommended the withdrawal of the trolley operation in 1954. By 1955-6 the system was operating at a loss and the council decided to run down its trolley operation. Services were halved on 25 March 1959 when routes along Lewes Road and those to the east were replaced by motor-buses. The last Brighton trolley-buses, on the Patcham and Fiveways routes, ran on 30 June 1961.
Eight of Brighton’s trolley-buses were purchased by other operators with the others sold for scrap, but now only one survives, owned by a private enthusiast in Kent. {54,55}

l) POST-WAR MOTOR-BUS EXPANSION and NATIONALISATION: Under the terms of the 1947 Transport Act the B.H.D. company was nationalised following the purchase of Tillings by the British Transport Commissioners. Services and buses were unaffected, but a local general manager was appointed to run the operation.
Services continued to expand throughout the suburbs, and in July 1948 the traffic commissioners allowed the corporation to operate outside the borough boundary for the first time. Peak Southdown annual mileage of 142,000,000 miles was reached in 1956 and they opened a new garage at Moulsecoomb Way in 1957. A new seven-storey headquarters, Southdown House, opened at Freshfield Road in 1964.

m) ‘BATS’ AGREEMENT: With the withdrawal of trolley-bus services it was obvious that a new agreement was required between the respective undertakings, and on 1 January 1961 the Brighton Area Transport Services (‘BATS’) agreement came into operation, covering the area from Shoreham Beach to Telscombe Tye. The three undertakings were permitted to work any part of the area and routes were reorganised over a period of three-and-a-half years. An open-top circular tour of the borough ran from 10 July 1964, and the first one-man double-deck buses were introduced in 1966 on the 26A route.

n) NATIONAL BUS COMPANY: The 1968 Transport Act created the National Bus Company, thereby bringing Southdown and B.H.D. into common ownership for the first time. In the interests of efficiency Southdown took over B.H.D. on 1 January 1969, although the red and cream livery and name remained. Southdown now ran 80%, and the corporation 20%, of the BATS routes.
The new Southdown operation introduced one-man working from 1970 for economic reasons, and changed the B.H.D. livery to green and cream with the name ‘Southdown-BHD’ from October 1971. In 1972 National Bus introduced standard liveries and all Southdown buses were painted entirely green from September 1972 until the last red and cream bus ran in March 1975. The late 1970s saw further rationalisation of routes, and more single-deck and one-man buses. Frequent ‘shuttle’ buses were introduced on some routes from April 1983.

p) DEREGULATION OF SERVICES and OTHER DEVELOPMENTS: On 1 January 1986 the town services of Southdown were re-established as an independent company, the Brighton and Hove Bus and Coach Company, with the old red and cream livery, and in May 1987 the new company was acquired by its senior management. Southdown then concentrated solely on its country routes and vacated Southdown House in 1987 when the company moved to a Lewes base; the building was then taken by BUPA. In August 1989 Southdown was sold to the Scottish-based Stagecoach Holdings Ltd for around £10 million.
The corporation services, which had opted for a blue and white livery in June 1970, were renamed simply ‘Brighton Buses’ in 1986, a private subsidiary of Brighton Borough Transport with no rates support. The 25-year-old BATS agreement ended at the start of 1986, and routes were opened up to all operators upon the national deregulation of services in October 1986. While profitable routes were naturally continued by the main companies, loss-making services were opened to tender and paid for by the county and district councils.

For many years now since the 1960s the town’s buses have been caught in a vicious circle of competition from private transport, increasing fares, poor time-keeping and the consequent further increases in private traffic. Traffic management measures and radical fare policies are surely necessary if the bus services vital to so many people are to survive into the next century.

Any numerical cross-references in the text above refer to resources in the Sources and Bibliography section of the Encyclopaedia of Brighton by Tim Carder. 

The following resource(s) is quoted as a general source for the information above: {51,53,123}