MUNICIPAL TRANSPORT IN THE TOWN

By John Child

When at the October 2003 reunion I produced a piece of aluminium 7” by 4” painted red it was immediately identified as the colour of Northampton’s buses.  (Sorry about the 7X4, but I have never really got used to the new money, although I could get used to drinking beer in litres).    

Every one of us would have travelled at one time or another on a Northampton red bus.  Most teachers would have used them too to get to the school unless they had a car or bike.  By 1959 Buzzer’s car was a black Ford Prefect UTE 363.  As the dinner time bus queue gathered at the number 8 stop opposite the Romany he would sweep by and up the Kingsley Road briefly acknowledging his ‘small boys and girls’ – one of his favourite phrases despite the fact that as the years passed he had to physically look up to us.  

Long lunch hours had been a feature of school and work life in the town since at least the late 19^th Century.  This enabled many to go home for dinner and the very reliable bus service was essential.  You could normally set your watch by the bus service in the late fifties and early sixties.  Before Gunner invested in his first Morris Minor he could be seen pacing across the Racecourse to the White Elephant where he hovered waiting to catch the Route 15 to the Headlands.

After lunch he hoped was that the no 15 to the Town Centre was on time.  Perhaps Tiger Timms’s black Ford Prefect LNV 22 left Gunner somewhat envious.  He lived just around the corner from Gunner in Bushland Road and may have sped past him whilst Gunner was fumbling for the correct change.  So it was only a matter of time before Gunner decided to take to the open road himself and invest in a set of wheels.  He was even sufficiently gallant to have his driving instructor pick him up outside the school gates and exhibit himself kangarooing up Trinity Avenue. 

Northampton municipal transport system was locally authority owned from 1901 to 1993.  The opening of the electric tram network in part in 1904 was an occasion of great Civic pride.  Thousands gathered to witness the demise of the horse trams on July 21^st that year.  Policemen in their white summer helmets, men in their strawboaters, ladies with their parasols.  A murmur of admiring approval greeted the new electric cars just before 3pm as they glided around the corner of the Drapery into Mercers Row.  Decked out from top to bottom with bright flowers, floral designs and palms, tram number 3 was driven off by Mrs H. Wooding, wife of the Chairman of the Tramways Committee.  By December 1934 they had all gone; their demise celebrated by a mere fish and chip supper at the Geisha Café in Mercers Row. 

The trams had served the town well until after the First World War when the Council took advantage of Government subsidy schemes which gave us the housing estates of Dallington, Delapre and Abington.  Bus services to meet that need then started and were operated by single decker, solid tyred Thornycrofts which linked trams routes to new housing areas.  What a ride!  But it was not long before the partner became the predator.  Northampton folk had tasted the motor buses and liked them.  

The rest of the story taking us through the bus era continues in part 2

Acknowledgement to TPC and Geocities.