Popular appreciation of London Underground’s 1930s Modernist Tube station buildings has kept them well in the public eye. There was an equivalent programme, however, during the same decade at remote outposts of London Transport’s empire in the counties surrounding London. Thanks to an estate of run-down bus garages, London Transport’s Country Bus department enjoyed a renewal and replacement programme which left it with some Modernist and Streamline Moderne buildings that reflect their common patron – Frank Pick. This is the story of the best London Transport buildings you’ve never heard of – London’s Country Bus garages.
St Albans bus garage, ©TfL London Transport Museum collection
Outside the public transport industry, there is less regard for bus operations than for railways. The story of Charles Holden’s London Underground stations is well-enough known that it has traction outside the public transport community, but the other half of the story, that of London Transport’s many elegant bus garages and bus stations of the mid-twentieth century, has been largely forgotten.
The focus primarily on London Underground architecture under London Transport chief executive Frank Pick has overshadowed our understanding of the real extent of Pick’s enormous influence on how all of London Transport’s buildings looked. If you only consider London Underground, it seems as though Holden must have been mainly responsible for the distinctive look of the 1930s London Transport estate. Once you realise the same Modernist styles were repeated across London Transport’s bus buildings, undertaken by different architects, you begin to realise just how much Pick was influential in the choice of that particular style himself.
The architectural practice of Holden, Pearson and Adams (and Charles Holden in particular) has become synonymous with its work on London Underground stations, but there was another practice which similarly became inextricably linked with the appearance of London’s bus garages and bus stations – Wallis, Gilbert and Partners. The story has many surprising parallels with the development of the architecture for London Underground stations.
If people know Wallis, Gilbert and Partners today, it is either for its work on the so-called ‘fancy’ factories – buildings like the Hoover factory in Perivale , several others on the Golden Mile in Brentford, or for Victoria Coach Station. Yet there was once so much more to its public transport work in and around London.
Form follows function
Wallis, Gilbert and Partners specialised in industrial architecture. The practice was founded in 1916 by Thomas Wallis. Curiously unlike Adams, Holden and Pearson, where the identities of the named partners are known, no-one has ever identified who Gilbert actually was. Indeed he may not even have existed at all, perhaps being an invented name that simply added gravitas. The firm eventually did gain some partners though, one of whom was Frank Button. Button’s later firm Adie, Button and Partners would go on to design Stockwell Bus Garage after the Second World War.
Initially concentrating on factory commissions during the First World War, Wallis, Gilbert and Partners quickly established a reputation for understanding the needs of new factories, which were beginning to move to recognisably modern volume production methods requiring large areas of uninterrupted floor space. Exactly the same requirements, in fact, as bus garages. Although not particularly noteworthy in architectural terms, the practice designed bus garages in Crawley and Godstone in the 1920s for the East Surrey Traction Company.
Art Deco manufactories
Later, as the role of image and marketing became more important to industrial concerns, Wallis, Gilbert and Partners developed an Egyptian-influenced Art Deco style of architecture for factory offices which faced public roads. The first of these was the 1928 Shannon Company Factory in New Malden, while later and more famous examples include the Hoover Factory in Perivale and the Firestone Factory (controversially demolished) in Brentford. Although this was more ostentatious than Holden’s preferred style of stripped-back Modernism, it still shared some of the architectural spirit.
Firestone Factory entrance 1974, Peter Young via BHSProject.co.uk
Founder and senior partner Thomas Wallis was something of a contrast to Holden, someone who pursued a simpler life, both for himself and in his buildings. Wallis, on the other hand, apparently enjoyed the good life and was popular company at social gatherings, which often included many clients he had befriended.
Pick forms London General Country Services
Wallis, Gilbert and Partners would already have been known to Frank Pick before the creation of London Transport. As managing director of UERL, in 1932 Pick oversaw the incorporation of the National Omnibus and Traction Company and East Surrey Traction into London General Country Services. East Surrey Traction itself was controlled by UERL’s London General Omnibus Company, and had been since 1929.
Just as London General Country Services was formed, one of its first garages was built in Reigate. It was an impeccably polite building, finished in a rare-for-the-transport-industry Arts and Crafts style, calculatedly unlikely to cause offence to the residents of the Surrey town thanks to a planning requirement that it should blend in with the local area.
That wasn’t the image Pick wanted to present for his transport network though. Reigate Bus Garage occupied the same architectural space as London Underground architect Stanley Heaps’ stations for the Northern line’s Edgware extension – polite, well-mannered, but disappointing to the forward-looking Pick. Although partially demolished, much of Reigate Bus Garage survives as a residential development and a nursery school, though today there are few clues to its original use.
It was the Edgware extension stations that had led to Pick commissioning Holden for future station works, initially in the restrained Modernist style using Portland stone finishes that can still be seen on the Morden extension stations. Reigate Bus Garage marked a similar turning point for London bus architecture, but this time Wallis, Gilbert and Partners would be allowed another chance. They got two, in fact, before the creation of London Transport in 1933. The first was at Dorking, and the second at Windsor.
By this time, Pick had been on his famous 1930 tour of mainland Europe’s emerging Modernist architecture with Charles Holden and WPN Edwards, secretary to UERL chairman Lord Ashfield. Dorking and Windsor required new garages and attached bus stations which provided an opportunity for Pick to bring his preferred architectural style to bear on bus infrastructure. Where Holden transformed that preference into a recognisable building style on the London Underground, Wallis, Gilbert and Partners did the same for London’s country bus network.
Wallis, Gilbert and Partners’ first commissions from Pick
Dorking Garage and Bus Station was completed in 1932, and established the Streamline Moderne template which Wallis, Gilbert and Partners would follow in many of its later commissions. There was a family feel with Holden’s similar architecture for London Underground stations. Examination of this building shows an obvious read across from some of Holden’s Streamline Moderne elements at Sudbury Town London Underground station (completed the previous year), in particular, the platform waiting rooms with their round ends, and its projecting concrete canopy elements. The offices and waiting rooms at Dorking Garage curved gracefully away from the exit of the garage proper, wrapping around two sides of the forecourt. The Crittall windows were superbly proportioned and spaced, and the brickwork was exceptionally well-detailed, as it had been at Reigate. It was that rare thing – an exquisite bus garage and bus station.
Dorking Garage and Bus Station. John Howe, Kingsway Models
It must have had a dramatic impact on the quiet Surrey town, which suddenly found itself home to an extremely good piece of Streamline Moderne architecture, perhaps one of its only two, along with a Southern Railway ‘glasshouse’ signal box at the station. Here was somewhere that passengers could experience the future of transport first hand, the modern world arriving with a flourish in ultra-conservative Surrey. The garage would eventually close in 1990 and was demolished, to be replaced with housing.
Windsor Bus Station and Garage, meanwhile, took on a character more similar to Sudbury Town’s street-level building, though missing the latter’s concrete ‘lid’ which gives it such character. It opened in early 1933. Windsor’s offices, passenger waiting room and ticket office were contained in an angular Modernist building, which would eventually sport on its facade two fine totem-mounted London Transport roundels. The proportions and general ‘box’-like look of Windsor bus garage were similar, if on a smaller scale, to those of Sudbury Town, as were the tall windows above the main entrance doors. However, Windsor’s office/waiting room building included elements which were idiosyncratic of Wallis, Gilbert and Partners, such as the corner windows which appear on many of their factories, and highly detailed brickwork, with bricks placed vertically to break up the walls, highlight structural features, and provide visual interest.
Windsor Bus Station and Garage. John Howe, Kingsway Models
As would be the case at all Wallis, Gilbert and Partners’ bus garages, the actual garage building was competently designed though in a less obviously eye-catching way. That was deliberate. Wallis, Gilbert and Partners developed a trick with the glass and metal girder roofs of both Windsor and Dorking garages which would be repeated later on at locations where the garage was close to the road and in clear view of passers-by. By surrounding the metal roof structures with pitched tile roofs on the outer edges, Wallis, Gilbert and Partners was able to disguise the functional roofs in a way that was visually acceptable in the provincial towns where the Country Bus garages were located. The garages looked as though they had flat roofs with polite pitched tile sides; it was an illusion. Windsor garage and bus station has, like Dorking, also been lost, closed in 1984 and demolished to make way for housing.
Victoria Coach Station
Meanwhile, Wallis, Gilbert and Partners won a commission to design a piece of London’s public transport infrastructure which would evade ownership by London Transport for decades to come: Victoria Coach Station. Along with Holden’s 55 Broadway, it is one of most substantial public transport buildings in London not built by a mainline railway company. Completed in 1932, just three years after 55 Broadway, it exchanges the vertical emphasis of 55 Broadway’s 10 storeys for a more flowing, horizontal appearance comprising six storeys. The two buildings are, though, remarkably similar in concept. 55 Broadway has an Underground station in its basement and housed London Underground’s offices. Victoria Coach Station was commissioned by London Coastal Coaches to house its offices, with a coach station on the ground floor.
Victoria Coach Station. Credit Daniel Wright
Not beholden to Pick’s views on the appearance of buildings for this project, Victoria Coach Station is the transport building which bears the strongest resemblance to Wallis, Gilbert and Partners’ ‘fancy’ factories. Like those factories, it features a tall central tower flanked by two wings, here angled back to fit on the coach station’s corner site. The tower has corner windows and fluted transoms, while the wings feature chevron-pattern glazing bars at ground floor level, and fluted bands between floors which verge on the Nautical Moderne. The curved terminations of the wings, where they meet the tower, are clearly influenced by contemporary ocean liner design. It is hard to imagine Pick agreeing to some of the building’s more fanciful design elements – including the Egyptian-influenced stepping back towards the top of the tower, and the repeating pattern formed from four small indented squares. Indeed Wallis, Gilbert and Partners considered the building to be enough of a demonstration of its skills that the partners moved their offices there.
Victoria Coach Station window details. Credit Daniel Wright
With the creation of the London Passenger Transport Board (LPTB) at the beginning of 1933 and with Pick as its chief executive, one of the LPTB’s early priorities was to sort out the collection of inadequate bus garages its London Country Bus and Coach Department had inherited, replacing them with modern and efficient premises. Much less building work was thought necessary for central area bus operations, although several new Underground stations were built with bus stations attached. Southgate, for instance, features a Charles Holden bus station almost always overlooked in favour of the famous circular entrance building for the Underground station. Only a few new central area bus garages were built in the inter-war years. They were generally severe-looking buildings, lacking the style seen at the new Underground stations and at the Country Bus garages and bus stations; a rare failure of Pick’s mission to make London Transport look good as well as operate efficiently.
In October 1933, approval was given for a new bus garage at Epping. It opened in September 1934, just 11 months later. One of the LTPB’s key design requirements for the new Country Bus garages was that “they should harmonise as far as possible with the landscapes of the country towns into which they were being inserted.” (Glazier (2006) p29). The issue of London Transport’s presence ‘over the border’ was as delicate then as it is now.
Having demonstrated at Windsor and Dorking that it appreciated Pick’s taste in Modernist buildings and understood the need to ensure bus garages were visually acceptable in provincial towns, Wallis, Gilbert and Partners was appointed as architects for Epping Garage. In the end, this garage (there was no attached bus station) was almost completely hidden from view by a row of cottages, so it was not an eye-catching start to Wallis, Gilbert and Partners’ work for the LPTB. But it was just the first in a run of buildings that the practice would complete in remarkably short order. Epping Garage itself closed as early as 1963, and the site is now occupied by a supermarket.
Hertford Garage was the next to open, in January 1935. This time, there was no need for a tiled pitch roof to screen the garage’s lattice girder roof, because the garage was well away from the main road. The notable design feature of Hertford Garage was a long office block on the opposite side of the approach road to the garage building. This was the architectural highlight, with brick lower parts and a huge expanse of Crittall glazing in an almost continuous run along the length of the building and around the curved end.
A concrete canopy ran all the way round the office block, in a style which would have been familiar to London Underground passengers from the platform shelters at many of Holden’s stations. The Streamline Moderne template for Wallis, Gilbert and Partners’ subsequent Country Bus garages was now firmly in place. Hertford Garage closed in 1989 and, just like those at Dorking and Windsor, was replaced by housing.
Two Waters Garage in Hemel Hempstead opened in April 1935. Thanks to its topography, with an approach road that rose towards the garage, it was a dramatic-looking location. The office block, with its rounded end and canopy (which only ran along part of the block, rather than all the way as it did at Hertford), stood on a substantial plinth, itself above road level. Topped off with a London Transport roundel, this gave it a commanding appearance. It closed in 1995. The garage was demolished, and the site is now occupied by light industry and a road junction.
Hemel Hempstead (Two Waters) Bus Garage. Creweboy
Amersham Garage opened later in 1935, in August. It was sited directly on the street so the garage featured slightly more detailing – including decorative lamps and horizontal bricks over the garage entrances, rather than the plain concrete beams at some of the other Country Bus garages, along with some smart bus shelters. Again, there was a Streamline Moderne block of offices with a canopy and rounded end, across the access road from the garage. Closed in 1989, a supermarket was subsequently built on the site.
Amersham Garage. London Transport Museum Collection
Tring Garage opened in October 1935. Set back from the road, the garage had huge glass windows redolent of Wallis, Gilbert’s early factories. According to one commentator it had “a general air of delicacy and grace” (Glazier 2006 p41) which is a rare compliment for a bus garage. The office block stepped downwards along its length as the garage was lower than road level, a layout almost the opposite of Hemel Hempstead. Closed in 1977, the site is now occupied by Royal Mail premises.
Tring Bus Garage
That makes a total five new Modernist/Streamline Moderne transport buildings in a single year. It is testimony to Wallis, Gilbert and Partners’ work rate, and even more so to the determination of the LPTB to push through a modernisation plan at a speed it is hard to imagine in today’s transport industry.
Staines Bus Garage opened in June 1936. It was an extremely sinuous-looking design when viewed from the garage’s approach road, with curved runs of offices either side of the garage forecourt, and canopies on the circular stub towers at the ends of the office blocks describing almost three-quarters of a circle. It closed in 1996 and the site is now occupied by serviced office space and meeting rooms, housed in a Postmodernist building called Centurion House. According to one office space-finding website, it is a “sensitive conversion of the old Staines Bus Depot”. This is not really true – it is actually a complete replacement.
Staines Bus Garage. John Howe, Kingsway Models
Addlestone Garage also opened in June 1936. It was similar in layout to Two Waters except that the positions of garage and office block were reversed. Square pillars on the fence along its boundary were constructed with the care and attention Wallis, Gilbert and Partners lavished on the brickwork at all its Country Bus garages, with bricks placed vertically at the bottom of the pillars. One of those pillars is the only part of Addlestone Garage that now survives, after the garage closed in 1997. The site is now Gleeson Mews housing development, but the single pillar from the boundary line stands at the back of the pavement in testament to the LPTB’s commissioning of high quality industrial architecture.
Addlestone Garage had two round ended offices facing each other across the access road, one of which is shewn in John Howe’s Kingsway Model
Tube style for Tunbridge Wells
Far out into the Home Counties, Wallis, Gilbert and Partners’ next commission was to design a small bus and coach station for Tunbridge Wells, which opened in 1936. The town’s bus garage was not part of London Transport’s portfolio. That meant that rather than a garage and associated offices, the firm’s commission was for a smaller bus station building containing only offices and a waiting room.
Tunbridge Wells Bus and Coach Station. Credit John Hambley/Kevin Lane Collection
The small building was finished in the familiar materials of brick, concrete for the plinth and wrap-around projecting canopy, and metal Crittall windows. It had two projecting rounded bays at each end, and was a particularly neat and attractive design. Even when past its best, not kept particularly clean, and part-occupied by a taxi firm, this tiny slice of stylish modernity stood in complete contrast to the much more traditional buildings around it. It was demolished in the late 1970s or early 1980s, and the site is now occupied by a block of flats.
Of all the LTPB Country Bus garages, Wallis, Gilbert and Partners’ St Albans was arguably the best looking. It opened in August 1936. Pick was especially keen not to upset the residents of St Albans with the arrival of a large bus garage and attached bus station. St Albans had been a case study in a booklet published by the Design and Industries Association, of which Pick was a founder member, showing how insensitive modern developments could ruin the character of historic towns. As such, Pick paid special attention to the garage’s architecture and ensured the retention of mature trees on site for screening purposes (Green (2013): p114).
St Albans Garage. John Howe, Kingsway Models
The office block at St Albans Garage was a two storey building, the first time that a multi-storey arrangement had been used since Windsor garage. At the corner of the building, the firm designed a 90-degree curved turn with a tall window, which contained a staircase, rather than a projecting 180-degree rounded end such as at Addlestone.
The garage proper was attached to the offices and with a clever window arrangement on the garage, Wallis, Gilbert and Partners ensured that it looked like part of an office, rather than a vehicle maintenance facility. With the retention of the trees also helping screen the new building, it did indeed “harmonise as far as possible” with the town.
Further enhancing the garage was its attached bus station. Clearly drawing inspiration from the house style Holden had developed for the 1930s London Tube stations, a stepped concrete canopy was provided for passengers to shelter under. It was equipped with stylish high-back wooden benches, featuring cantilevered seats. Curved windows at the riser of each step of the canopy gave a supremely streamlined appearance. The same design solution of stepped roofs linked by upright glazing was also used on various London Underground stations, but rarely was the concept as effectively executed as at St Albans. However, while Sudbury Hill and Park Royal stations can still be enjoyed to this day, St Albans Bus Station and Garage were demolished in the late 1990s and replaced by housing, despite local attempts to save the building.
Northfleet Garage, opened in 1937, featured another two storey building for the on-site offices, though the canopy was less dramatic and the whole building less eye-catching than some of Wallis, Gilbert’s earlier designs, no doubt partly explained by the fact that this was one of the bus garages that had no associated bus station. However, there were many careful details in the brickwork as usual. Like St Albans, the 90-degree curved end to the office block housed a staircase, though its double-height window was moved to the side of the building at Northfleet.
Northfleet Garage. Credit Chris Whippet via Geograph.org.uk
Surprisingly, the garage survives to this day. It is the only one of Wallis, Gilbert and Partners’ Country Bus garages that remains intact, and is currently occupied by Arriva. Unfortunately, the architectural merits of the office building are now harder to discern, as it has become dirty and its Crittall windows have been replaced. It is also partly obscured by modern railings and palisade fencing, not to mention some less-than-sensitively installed signage. The courses of vertical bricks are evident though, adding style to what might otherwise be a rather severe building.
The enlargement of Leatherhead Garage, which was completed in 1938, was Wallis, Gilbert and Partners’ final work for the London Passenger Transport Board (LPTB)’s Country Bus and Coach Department. It featured only a new office block with the existing garage left standing and saw a return to the single storey layout (a second, rather awkward, storey was added in the 1950s) utilising the frequently seen 180-degree curve at the end of the block. As usual, it was subsequently closed (in 1999) and demolished, to be replaced with small commercial buildings.
Leatherhead Garage. Leatherhead Bus Garage FB Group
LPTB’s other architects
Just as Adams, Holden and Pearson did not have sufficient capacity to design every Underground station in the 1930s, and other architectural practices delivered stations in a recognisably similar style (such as Welch and Lander’s Park Royal), neither did Wallis, Gilbert and Partners have capacity to work on all the new country bus garages that were required. Swanley and High Wycombe were examples of country bus garages by others. The former design was by London Transport’s own Architect’s Department, but still had a Streamline Moderne office block, which was a close visual match to the style established by Wallis, Gilbert and Partners.
At St Albans and Northfleet, Wallis, Gilbert and Partners had dispensed with the 180-degree curved ends to the office blocks that had featured at their earlier garages, and the buildings were more tightly massed, compact and tall rather than long and low. The trend was set to continue with a new garage on Straight Road in Romford. The drawings for the main office building at this garage show that Wallis, Gilbert and Partners planned to return to the more angular style used at Windsor, with no curves on the building. Had it been built, it would have been a very imposing building; a larger version of Windsor’s office building. Unfortunately, approval was only given to Wallis, Gilbert and Partners’ drawings for the new garage by London Transport in July 1939, just weeks before the outbreak of the Second World War.
In the same way that some of Holden’s most exciting designs for the London Underground, on the Northern Line extension to Elstree, were abandoned because of the war, such was the case of Romford Garage. It was London Buses’ own ‘Northern Heights’.
Postwar austerity
Following the war, Holden’s last London Underground stations, on the Central Line’s eastern extension, were pale shadows of his earlier work, pared down to meet the available budget. Even the wonders of Gants Hill’s ‘Moscow’ concourse did not carry through to the surface, where there was no station building, just pedestrian subway entrances. The same happened with Wallis, Gilbert and Partners’ work for London Buses. Finally allowed to complete a central area bus garage, the practice’s 1951 Peckham Bull Yard bus garage clearly harked back to pre-war Streamline Moderne design elements, which was based on a pre-war plan. But by the time it was built, the budget for flair disappeared and it was a much more awkward building that lacked the effortless grace of their inter-war work. One of its three towers was rounded, the other two left square, which gave an oddly lop-sided look to the building, and the whole package spoke of a lesser interest in the appearance of London Transport’s buildings.
Wallis, Gilbert and Partners was no longer the same business by this time. Thomas Wallis retired from the firm on the first day of 1946, succeeded by his son Douglas. The practice demerged as two partners formed their own firm, while Frank Button never returned after leaving the company during the war. The practice never again enjoyed the high profile that its 1930s fancy factories in West London had brought it.
The new, smaller, Wallis, Gilbert and Partners practice went on to design further central area bus garages including Kingston and Elmers End, but like much of the rest of London Transport’s architectural output of that time, it fell short of the artistic heights of the inter-war bus garages and bus stations.
Few survivors
Of Wallis, Gilbert and Partners’ London bus and coach buildings, only Victoria Coach Station and Northfleet Garage survive. Ironically, it is Swanley Garage – not one of Wallis, Gilbert and Partners’ own designs at all, but almost indistinguishable from them – that is now the best-preserved reminder of the story of London Transport’s Streamline Moderne bus garages. Swanley Garage is still in use by Kent-based independent Go-Coach and is in far from pristine condition, but remains a startling piece of London Transport design located deep in the Home Counties.
Swanley Garage. Credit Stacey Harris via Geograph.org.uk
Given the attrition rate, and dispersed footprint of Wallis, Gilbert and Partners’ 1930s Country Bus garages and bus stations, it is unsurprising that this element of London Transport’s architectural output is today less well-known than that of its Underground stations. But collectively their work is no less worthy than Holden’s, and is a fine testament to Frank Pick’s vision.
This article was based on author Daniel Wright’s original two-part Country Buses series on his The Beauty of Transport blog, but has been substantially reworked. Given that some of the garages have unfortunately been demolished, photos of models were used to provide a sense of the physicality of the buildings involved. We are grateful to Kingsway Models for letting us use copyrighted photos of its models to illustrate this article.
I would like to say how much I appreciate this interesting article. What is not clear is why Pick didn’t extend Wallis’ remit to central area garages – although the Central Area was quite well stocked with fairly modern sheds, there were some completely new trolleyus depots – eg Bexleyheath – going up in the same period. There were also numerous Central area Moderne offices at depot entrances – is it recorded who designed those?
A brief hunt online through records of the London Gazette reveals this piece from the issue of 18th January, 1946 (but I’ve found no previous mention of Gilbert as yet):
“NOTICE is hereby given that the Partnership
between Thomas Wallis, Frank Cox, Douglas Thomas
Wallis and Sidney Thomas George Elliott carrying
on business as Architects at Coastal Chambers, 172
Buckingham Palace Road, S.W.1, under the style or
firm of WALLIS GILBERT & PARTNERS has been
dissolved by effluxion of time as from the 31st day
of December 1945.—Dated this 9th day of January
1946.”
This suggests to me that the firm became moribund perhaps as a result of the war.
On the subject of demolished bus infrastructure, are you at LR Towers aware that the current Vauxhall bus station is to be demolished? It will be replaced by distributed bus stops, a ‘public square’, some shops and offices and passing some land to the developer of adjacent high rise blocks.
TFL and Lambeth seem to be in a hurry to get it done before too many outside the area notice the proposal. They claim it has to go as removing the gyratory makes it impossible to keep the bus station but other forces seem to be in play, too.
A planning application will be lodged later this year.
What a fascinating article; thanks so much.
Thank you for a very interesting article, seems unthinkable today that TfL would be empire-building in the home counties!
The St Albans story is particularly interesting, I lived there around the time and have no recollection of the building or any campaign to save it… where exactly was it, I can’t see or think of anywhere obvious it can have been?
Great article! I love the idea of the 725 bus route…
Whereabouts is the old Swanley bus garage? I might go and take a look sometime…
@Herned – it’s surprising that none of the Country bus depots has been listed.
@SHLR
Part of the 725 lives on: it was launched in 1953, and in the 1970s a variant ran to Heathrow, instead of Windsor, as the 726. This eventually took over entirely, and continues today in a truncated form as the X26.
Lovely article, fantastic buildings.
Just to correct a amall inaccuracy though, Tunbridge Wells wasn’t demolished until around 2000, although bus use ceased long before that.
Locations:
a bit of research has unearthed these pictures of St Albans
http://www.ampyx.org.uk/lcountry/garages/garage_sa.html
http://www.timmonet.co.uk/html/sa_gar_out.html
and indicates that it was here
https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@51.756392,-0.3349726,3a,75y,7.29h,86.87t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1szpungDxEjhtEuHiwv-v3hg!2e0!7i13312!8i6656
Thanks Timbeau – I did see the first link and noted it said St Peters Street, I was fooled by the style of the replacement development on that corner.
As to GH’s point about listing, it would seem that unwanted bus garages would be quite easy to prove they could not be sensibly converted to another use and prone to removal even with listing
In answer to Herned’s question, the bus garage at St Albans was at the corner of St Peter’s Street and Grange Street.
@SHLR
Swanley garage is at the south eastern end of London Road, just short of the current terminus of TfL route 233. The building on the right in this view https://goo.gl/maps/jxZigNo6GY22 is the original depot reclad. Change Streetview to August 2008, and you can see the poor state of the original finish.
If nothing else the article clearly illustrates the decline of bus use in the former London Country area and the asset stripping and rationalisation that occured under NBC and then private ownership. So much transport infrastructure destroyed and either not replaced at all or replaced with a shed on an industrial estate.
Of course much the same has happened in the “Central area” with London Buses selling off land and garages many times in the 1980s and early 90s when under government control. Only the lessons of NBC privatisation prevented a wholesale massacre of London garage stock because of “claw back” provisions in the privatisation provisions. Now we are possibly back in an era where housing development may again endanger bus garages in residential areas coupled with new people moving in to areas and campaigning for garages to be closed because they’re “noisy” and “intrusive”. The only small saving grace is that Mayoral planning guidance recognises bus garages as key infrastructure making it rather harder for them to be lost and also recognising the value of constructing new garages.
Graham H
I think the reason for Wallis, Gilbert not doing any of the central area depots/garages in the inter-war period was probably pressure of work. With several of the country bus garages not designed by Wallis, Gilbert, the practice would appear to have had quite enough to do in the Home Counties. And it was still doing non-transport work for other clients at the same time. If you can get your hands on Ken Glazier’s London Transport Garages book, it’s very good on designers of each garage, be they central or country or trolleybus.
To everyone else who’s left a nice comment or clarified some detail: thank you. I was somewhat fearful about putting myself in front of LR’s extraordinarily knowledgeable commentators but you’ve made me feel welcome. It’s much appreciated.
To clarify about Tring, the office block is regrettably no more but the garage building itself survives albeit with small bricked extensions at either end.
Congratulations to Daniel on this piece through which I’ve now also discovered his excellent blog!
WW
Thanks for that – answers a question I was going to ask about wholesale demolition (!)
Meanwhile …
Arup’s superb Bus=station at Vauxhall is proposed to be for the chop?
IMHO this is ridiculous & a vast waste of money … yet I see no ability to protest this move.
Am I looking in the wrong place?
I find the reference to Holden’s designs for the Bushey Heath extension fascinating. Are these available on the Internet? I had a quick look, but nothing forthcoming…
Brilliant article, thanks.
Greg T – The Vauxhall consultation ran its course over a year ago – it’s all here https://consultations.tfl.gov.uk/roads/vauxhall-cross/
… it was a big issue locally and there was opposition on many grounds, but it would seem to be all over now.
@Ian Sergeant – Tony Beard’s book “By tube beyond Edgware ” has a number of drawings and sketches of the proposed stations, including Elstree South which would have entirely followed the pre-War tradition
A bit more research needed for Dorking. An aerial view from the 1930s is the only clue I can find for the location
http://www.britainfromabove.org.uk/image/epw057017
http://www.britainfromabove.org.uk/image/epw053882?ref=6
And here is the same location today
https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@51.2270717,-0.3356798,3a,90y,124.66h,77.07t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sSLMo-kQaTJ00okkWgbuYYA!2e0!7i13312!8i6656!6m1!1e1
There must be more information out there, surely?
Timbeau
Dorking was on the west side of Horsham Road, at its junction with South St (details from Glazier’s “London Transport Garages”). The site is now occupied by a housing development notably more recent than the surrounding properties (always a giveaway that something sizeable has been lost), called Townfield Court.
https://goo.gl/maps/tQFhuf1tJFm
Thank you for the memory of St. Albans garage. I grew up in St. Albans and travelled from there to school in Hatfield from 1961 to 1967. Great days riding on the RTs.
Excellent article. What a pity so many garages have been lost, especially St Albans, where I live.
A fascinating piece, thank you for this
A fascinating article. I had heard of plans to build a bus garage on Straight Road in Romford but I’ve never yet found any definite information about this until reading this article. I’ve been led to believe that my house stands on the site of the planned garage, can anyone shed any more light on this for me?
Windsor proved a little easier to locate, thanks to this local history website, which named three of the surrounding roads.
http://theroyalwindsorforum.yuku.com/topic/1386/The-London-Transport-Bus-Garage#.WPvT6IWcHIU
It appears to be here
https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@51.4744183,-0.614793,3a,75y,127.54h,75.87t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sBZAp_lQdunZAD4S5hzLKTQ!2e0!7i13312!8i6656
For orientation, the belfry seen in the distance in the first photo appears to be the one seen on GSV, and is part of the hospital. The bus-standing area shown in the model is facing Frances Road, opposite the hospital.
Was Romford a Green Line garage to replace London Road, or a red bus garage built in North Street post War?
Windsor garage was indeed at the location indicated by Timbeau on the southern edge of Windsor. Most London Country services started at the garage and then passed through central Windsor. Windsor was also served by Thames Valley (later Alder Valley), which did not have a depot there: buses operated by Bracknell, Reading, Maidenhead and High Wycombe depots operated to Windsor and terminated at the Central Station.
When Windsor garage closed, operation moved to a new garage in Slough which also replaced the Alder Valley depot at Maidenhead. This became one of First Bus Berkshire’s depots and is now their only depot: they pulled out of Bracknell as soon as there was any competition from independents.
A really enjoyable article – thank you. Can I add a few comments?
The photo of Amersham (code MA) illustrates just why so many new Country Area garages were needed, and quickly. The sheds to the left are the original Amersham and District garage, which was of inadequate size, even if it was in far better condition than most of those taken over by London General Country Services.
Re Tunbridge Wells (TW), I don’t think the statement that ‘The town’s bus garage was not part of London Transport’s portfolio’ is correct. TW was originally an Autocar garage, Autocar being a subsidiary of London General Country Services. Notably it was the first garage to have an allocation of Green Line RFs in 1951.
Attempts to save St Albans (SA) were more than just local. There was a strong attempt by the bus preservation movement during the early 1990s to set up a transport museum in part of the garage with the remainder of the garage and the other buildings being let commercially. From memory I attended two bus rallies/running days based on the forecourt of the closed garage with one of my preserved coaches, possibly in 1992 and 1993. Although a Trust was formed and a planning application submitted, the need for housing and the deep pockets of developers won out in the end. A useful link is here: http://www.ampyx.org.uk/lcountry/garages/garage_sa.html.
Can I endorse Daniel’s recommendation of Ken Glazier’s ‘London Transport Garages’ (Capital Transport 2006). If the subject interests you then this book is essential.
@Taz – according to Glazier Straight Road was to replace London Road.
I couldn’t find a decent map on-line, but the weird thing about “London Country” services was both how “far out” they went & also how far they did not go.
The area covered was more or less (IIRC) a big ellipse, with its long axis almost N-S, so that you could go well into Hertfordshire or Surrey & find Green London Buses, but going into Essex, you very soon found “Eastern Counties” – ditto to the West.
I have been told – I think it was to do with the pre-1933 bus operators that General associated with or bought before that time … mostly.
If anyone can find a decent on-line map, I for one would greatly appreciate it.
The Country services were indeed over an ellipse shaped area fitting a portrait shaped map, but with an ellipse shaped area for red bus services which was landscape oriented leaving very thin services to east and west. The route numbering scheme was 3XX to the north and 4XX to the south.
@Taz
http://www.ampyx.org.uk/lcountry/garages/#location_map
This map shows LCBS’s coverage area. Note that the red lines are local LCBS services, and the green lines are, erm, Green Line services crossing the “central” London area.
It is also my understanding that London Transport took over all of London General’s operations, and that company had taken over many operators in Surrey and Herts, but few in Kent, Essex and Berks. Its rail operations were similarly skewed, again for historical reasons – stretching right across Bucks, but hardly touching SE London at all.
@Greg T -the ellipse wasn’t quite complete – there was a gap in Country services which prevented you travelling between Romford and Brentwood (served by a central route),so you couldn’t do a complete circuit of the capital by Green Rover ticket alone. (it would have taken more than the day for which a single GR ticket was valid, anyway,although you could do some spectacular part circles: Northwood to Tonbridge, for example.)
@Timbeau – the odd shape of LT’s “Special Area” (within which it didn’t require Traffic Commissioners’ permission to run services) reflects the way the LGOC set about protecting its core territory* before the first world war,whereby it identified a suitable leading local operator such as East Surrey or Road Car (in Kent) and in exchange for an agreement not to compete, offered loans of money and equipment. This worked for smaller operators but in the west and the east, LGOC faced much larger competitors such as the Thames Valley subsidiary of British Automobile Traction who had their own deals with bus manufacturers and much greater financial strength.
*That core territory seems to have evolved to include the country area mainly because, with the introduction of the reliable B type, LGOC could – and did – start running weekend excursions to places such as Dorking, well beyond the built up area of their quotidian activities. Some of these then evolved into daily red routes. The pattern of pre-war excursions (Chilterns, Surrey Hills etc) therefore also influenced the shape of the later LT area – no one wanted to go to Essex for the day (sorry! Also to the point, the LGOC/Combine’s urban core network was much weaker in East London – so many municipal tramways – and therefore the base for excursions was more difficult. )
There were many more County Area garages than those shown on Timbeau’s link – far too many to list here but a quick count of Glazier suggests around 76. Many of these would have been the locations of independents taken over on nationalisation and only used for a short while; others were rented while permanent premises were built or enlarged. My own favourites are Harefield, where I lived for many years – surely one of the few Country Area garages in the Met Police area and Loudwater, the base of the single bus on route 336A which was outstationed at its driver’s house right up to 1971.
@Littlejohn – are you sure that there were actual LT buildings at Loudwater and Harefield (and also at the other odd outstations south of the river)? I always understood that the Loudwater driver of the GS simply left it in the street, as you say, with the vehicle being swapped over once a week so that it could visit an engineering facility..
@ Graham H: If this link works – https://www.flickr.com/photos/drakes_bus_photographs/6869771050
the picture is captioned “T792…at the ex-LT Harefield Bus Garage”.
@Jim – what a lovely shot! If only I had a copy of Vol 2 of the Blacker/Lunn/Westgate “London’s buses”, we could see a pretty well complete listing of all country garages used by LT and its predecessors (V1 deals with the central area only). Alas, my copy of this seems to have gone astray…
The Loudwater outstation was always mentioned as something of a unique feature (Ranmore Common was the other site where the bus went home with the driver) – the use of the street may reflect the origins of the 336A which lay not with a previous operator with their own depot but with a commitment by the developers of the Loudwater estate to provide a bus service – the 336A must have been one of the longest lived developer-led services any where.
@Graham H. Yes, Loudwater is stretching it a bit although Glazier does list it in Appendix C2 . However, the idea of a driver (his name was Harry Cross) in LT and LCBS days just taking his bus home at night is too good to leave out. Harefield (code HA) however was a proper garage although firmly at the rickety end of the scale. It was opened by Filkins and Aisworth in 1922 and taken over in 1 Nov 33, closing on 31 Dec 35 when the allocation was transferred to Watford High Street. I think a run of 2+ years is sufficient to qualify as a proper, operating garage. It operated routes to Rickmansworth, Denham, Uxbridge and Northwood.
@Littlejohn – thank you for that. What the neighbours thought about having a bus parked in their street is presumably unrecorded…
A propos Jim’s lovely picture, I wonder if the Ts actually worked the 309; that batch was based at Watford and Hemel, so perhaps possible (but obviously not from Harefield Gar which had closed long before they appeared)
@Graham H. Ken Blacker’s ‘The London T Types’ has a picture of T798 on the 309 so the answer to your question is yes. The caption to the flickr photo says that T798 is ‘at the ex-LT Harefield Bus Garage’. It seems to be at a stop in Breakspear Road and as that was the address of the garage it is possible that it was where the Harefield Carriage Company was later located. For some reason I have always assumed that the garage premises was on the same side of the road as T798, just past The Green, where there were some farm buildings similar in style to those in photos of Harefield Garage.
Graham H. It was Holmbury St Mary where the outstation was and for route 412, bus being left at the pub (Royal Oak?) and two drivers lived in the village.
According to the East Surrey book, until Dorking garage was built, the King’s Head in Capel was also an outstation and the current resident (it is now private dwellings) has a room with a sign above it saying ‘Drivers Room’. This might pre date motor bus operation, of course.
@John Chilvers – thank you for the correction – my memory failing me there!
It’s a pity the practice seems to be vanishing/have vanished, although I can imagine all sorts of security/HSE objections to the practice these days. [I write being woken up every morning at 0600 and again at 0645 by Messrs Stagecoach sending two vehicles every morning approximately 12 miles from Aldershot out of service to take up position on my local bus route simply because they have no nearer overnight storage, with a similar run down in the evening service after 1800,with the last getting back to Aldershot about 22.30 – about 18 hours of running to provide a useable service of less than <12 hours. ] There seems a serious reluctance by bus operators to share facilities with each other and although I can think of tricky insurance and perhaps engineering issues, the rail industry has been forcibly told to solve these, even so; you might think that commercial pressures would force them to collaborate – the cost of a dead hour of bus operation is probably around £25-30, so in the case I mention, that's 2 x £30 twice a day for no revenue – and then we all wonder why the County's bill for bus subsidy is difficult to keep down. Oustationing ought to be a commercially attractive thing.
Graham H
Outstationing has lost favour in recent years for a variety of reasons. Sometimes the Engineers dislike having their buses parked remotely in case they don’t start or something that is more pertinent these days, has a defect that would fail a First Use Check. Sometimes Operations dislike it if the available drivers in the area are not ultra reliable, as getting a spare to an outstation can be problematic. Also this gs like managing fuel capacity can be a headache that is worth avoiding for 30 quid a day!
People did want to go to Essex, but the Essex they wanted to go to was Epping Forest, and so within the Special Area. What Essex lacked was suitable day trip locations 20-30 miles from the centre of London. There may have been an additional factor in that the Metropolitan Police District historically did not extend beyond about Chadwell Heath, which may have changed the political relationship with LGOC. In contrast the MPD extended to Staines in the west.
Also, an outstationed first bus cannot be substituted in time if it is faulty, whereas if all diagrams start from a depot, then there is a good chance of a spare vehicle.
Wallis, Gilbert & Partners also designed the Daimler Car Hire Garage in Bloomsbury, completed in 1930. Before it was turned into an ad agency office it housed a coach company – never did work out how they got coaches up the ramp!
http://www.modernistbritain.co.uk/post/building/Daimler+Car+Hire+Garage/
I also remember the London Country Garage in Stevenage. Obviously post war but from my recollection at least it had some modernist elements – vaguely remember a big porthole window on the front?
@jon B
Coaches didn’t use the ramp. According to the article you linked to, “it became a taxi and bus garage with the London Taxi Centre using the upper storeys and the Frames Rickard coach company using the basement”
The Hoover Building isn’t in Brentford: it’s in Perivale. Unless they’ve moved it
@Jonathan Cocking
You’re quite right. Many apologies. An earlier version of the article put the Hoover and Firestone factories simply in west London, but in an attempt to be a bit more accurate I’ve ended up moving them together and being a lot less accurate. Maybe one of the LR editors might edit the article accordingly, sparing my blushes any further?
[Corrected. LBM]
One of the references to the Hoover Factory being in Brentford is still there. [That one is now also fixed. Malcolm]
Maybe he was thinking of the Gillette Building
@Mike
I wasn’t actually, though it is also marvellous. Different architect too, Banister Fletcher in that case.
Originally, it was the splendid Pyrene Building and the Coty Cosmetics factory I also had in mind, also by Wallis, Gilbert and nearby to the Firestone factory on the Great West Road. Fantastic buildings all, but then I remembered I was supposed to be writing about bus garages, so out went Cory Cosmetics and the Pyrene Building. What remained (unfortunately) was the concept of multiple Wallis, Gilbert buildings in Brentford, to which the Hoover factory (which I couldn’t not mention as it’s arguably the practice’s best-recognised work) got attached as I wrote and rewrote.
Prosaic explanation aside, if the article has won any new fans to Wallis, Gilbert’s work, then all of the aforementioned buildings are well worth going to see. As is the Gillette Building and many others on the Great West Road.
Trivial typo – LTPB a few lines beneath the photo of VCS window details should be LPTB.
[Fixed. Cheers. LBM]
More generally, it’s a shame that so many modern users of extant old bus garages, whether for the same purpose or for some other industry, seem to have no interest in maintaining historical standards of tidiness and cleanliness. Insensitive security fencing may be a modern necessity, but scrap/derelict/cannabalised vehicles and piles of material left in plain view on cracked and oil-stained concrete are not.
Charles Holden has a mention and has been discussed before on these pages.
For those with access to the BBC iPlayer, the latest episode of The Antiques Roadshow (available at the time of this comment for 23 days) is at Senate House of the University of London:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b08nwrl5/antiques-roadshow-series-39-19-senate-house-1
It includes a fine introduction, describing Holden’s work, with some good interior views of Senate House and archive footage. There maybe more during the programme but I haven’t watched the whole thing yet.
Thanks for the link to Senate House, Graham. I used to correspond with this address in past years of learning, but knew nothing of its history – or the connection with Holden.
Glad to have caught up with the footage.
Mention of the Amersham (MA) bus garage, which was sadly demolished to make way for a Tesco store, reminds me that the older adjacent former Amersham & District garage, which had been part of the premises of a car dealer, is also now due to be demolished.
I appreciate that the article is not about Charles Holden, but almost opposite and within sight of Colliers Wood underground station is the Charles Holden pub. I have never been there and am totally unconnected with it. From what I can see from their website there is no explanation for its naming, although the pub sign has a picture of him.
While Amersham bus garage closed in 1989, I believe it was a few years until it was actually demolished (along with the gasworks behind). I think I remember it being there when I was young (5 or 6) – I certainly remember the gasworks, and the was some hoo-haa about knocking the bus garage down to build the Petrol Station and TESCO extension (the original TESCOs site being mostly where a sausage factory used to be) on the site. My parents, who were more aware of their surroundings in the late 80s than I was as a toddler, seem to think that the bus garage building lasted until the early 90s.
The earlier bus garage next door, which was a garage/used car showroom until recently, is in the process of being demolished to be replaced by a large sheltered living building. It was nothing special.
As an addendum to my previous comments about Harefield Garage (HA), London Bus Magazine number 90 (Winter 1994/95) has an excellent article by Brian Bunker entitled ‘London Transport Minibuses 1933 – 1940’. Page 35 has a photo of one of Filkins & Ainsworth’s four Crossleys. It was 10 years old on acquisition by LT and with wire wheels it must have looked antiquated even when new. Yet LT still went to the trouble of repainting it into fleet livery. It is also recorded that C76, the only Cub inherited from an Independent, was allocated to Harefield until the garage closed when it transferred to Watford High Street (WA).
The London Gazette entry referred to above, specifies that the architectural practice was terminated by “the effluxion of time”, which means that it had been established to last only til a determinable future date. Given this date was December 31st, 1945, that suggests to me that there may have been some dissension between the partners before the war, but they had agreed to continue on its outbreak, but only until the war’s conclusion.
The St Albans garage preservation movement was very active and high profile, in that impressionist and Red Dwarf star Chris Barrie lent his full support.
Al I hope is that Chris Barrie didn’t lend his support in his Mr Brittas character.if he had, the venture would be doomed!
I hope this site is still active.
Can anyone tell me when LT stopped using Epping Garage as such an item. I’m relaibly informed it became a mechanics garage or sales showroom but not the date although 1967 has been mentioned. Any help much appreciated.
Kindest Regards
Epping (EP) closed on 21 May 1963, being replaced by the new Harlow garage (HA).
With all the information about London Country Bus and Coach Garages I cannot find much about High Wycombe.I
Very little about High Wycombe garage (HE) seems to be available on the net. Glazier (see references above) tells us that the garage was built by Amersham & District (A&D) , using LGOC finance, in 1929 and was extended in 1938/39. It was situated at the bottom of Marlow Hill, at the junction of Marlow Hill and the south side of Queen Alexandra Road. Why so little has been written about HE is uncertain but is possibly because it was built soon after LGOC acquired a controlling interest in A&D in 1929. Most histories seem to concentrate on developments after the formation of LTPB. More of the background to LGOC’s investment in A&D can be found in Glazier’s ‘The Battles of the General’ (Capital, 2003). It included £5,000 as an advance commitment towards the building of the new garage. I have a memory that after closure the building was converted into a DIY store and looked largely unchanged externally but I have not been back there for many years now.
LPTB, not LTPB. Apologies for typo.
Well here’s a current google view at the bottom of Marlow Hill:
https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@51.6268471,-0.751587,3a,75y,242.19h,95.24t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1si5D6pZzRHOjYVdvIIgQXOQ!2e0!7i13312!8i6656
Plausibly looks like a former garage, and there is an extension at the rear.
Well Google StreetView shows a building at that location that’s not a DIY store but does look much like a bus garage. See here https://goo.gl/maps/qu4xms6MaEpaED1G6
Yes, that’s it. Of course it closed in September 1977 so it may have had several incarnations since then.
Views in mid 70s as a LC Garage
http://www.red-rf.com/images/455_MB90_PaulRedmond.JPG Photo © Paul Redmond
https://www.oxford-chiltern-bus-page.co.uk/upload%20100906/RML2440%20on%20326%20HE%20Garage%20Dec75%20Paul%20Davis.jpg Photo Paul Davis
LC Routemasters distinguished by their roof modifications.
It is celebrated by The Amersham & District Motorbus Society who recreated on Sunday 1st October 2017 “some of the High Wycombe local bus routes which were once served by London Country buses to mark the 40th anniversary of the closure of the London Country Bus Garage which used to be located in Queen Alexandra Road at the bottom of Marlow Hill in High Wycombe”.
The replacement High Wycombe bus garages look like DIY sheds so no architectural heritage material for the next generation LR writers.
Arriva https://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/5671194
Carousel https://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/5572455
Wiki Arriva page has some dates –
High Wycombe depot of London Country Bus Services (North West):
– 1988 acquired by LDT
– the Bee Line
– 1994 Go-Ahead Group’s Oxford Bus Company
– 2000 Arriva
– 2005 High Wycombe garage moved to a new purpose built depot following the closure of the old bus station in the town, where the previous garage was.
For clarity, the dates quoted by ALEKS are for different sites, not directly connected with the previous Country Area garage.
An aside on High Wycombe – Thames Valley’s Wycombe Marsh depot (which closed when Newlands Bus Station opened – somewhere around the late 60s / early 70s) is also still standing – or at least was last time I looked.
The Kwik Fit building at https://goo.gl/maps/1kxdwP7nWLTvXB3n8
What a super article and some wonderful historical information. They were certainly halcyon days. Many thanks.