The Demise of the Country Bus
Nick Turner

Within one as yet unfinished lifetime, the very character of village life has changed immeasurably and, in the same way that the large red phone kiosk on the Green is now reduced to a matchbox sized item in the pocket, so too has the way we move around.  In Fifties Britain few ‘ordinary’ folk had cars and the only concession to becoming a ‘private motorist’ was a flood of ex-War Dept. motor cycles that could be picked up from huge dealerships for £5 - £15 apiece.

For most, though, this was the age of the bus.  Horsted was well served compared to some nearby villages, in that we were served by no fewer than three routes that, between them, provided a half-hourly service to Haywards Heath from 7am to 10pm with the last one back to the village at 10.10pm.   It was thus possible to use buses for work, to visit the Sussex Hall for evening events (before Clair Hall) or the Perrymount Cinema ……… and romantic involvement wasn’t restricted to the village.  On many occasions though, if a film ended late but one wanted to see the end, it was common practice to stay in the cinema and walk home afterwards, but this was the time when the sound of other footsteps on the road would merely result in a cheery ‘Good Night’ as they passed in the blackness.

Waiting for one’s bus in the Bus Station, one would see double deckers leaving for such strange destinations as ‘Stony Lane’ or ‘Butterbox Corner’, but our single deckers – we couldn’t have double deckers because of the Waterworks bridge – would show ’32 Uckfield’, ’36 East Grinstead’ or 30 ‘Chelwood Common’.  All had come from Brighton via Burgess Hill with the 36 also serving Hassocks and, for trips to the beach, had a distinct advantage over the train by terminating in Pool Valley, opposite the Pier.   Our other ‘beach’ was Piltdown Pond on the 32 route but all this was to change as a result of one Sixties policy decision that was to decimate the bus as a means of rural transport.

Throughout Britain, bus companies like our local ‘Southdown’ were independent commercial businesses that operated for a profit by economically providing services the public could use.  One facet of this was ‘Connections’, a series of meeting points where routes crossed, thus enabling people to travel from Horsted Keynes to, say, Tunbridge Wells on a guaranteed basis.  The hourly 30 would leave the village at 31 mins past each hour and meet both southbound and northbound 92s at Chelwood Common.  None would leave until all three had arrived in case there were passengers to transfer.  The southbound 92 would serve Uckfield, Hailsham and Eastbourne, whereas northwards it would cover Forest Row and East Grinstead.  By co-operating (there’s an old fashioned word) with neighbouring operator Maidstone and District, the 92 would meet their 91 in Forest Row and complete our notional journey to Tunbridge Wells via Hartfield, Groombridge etc.

These complex journeys were the exception rather than the rule so, for normal run of the mill trips, the company recognised that the general flow of people was from village to town and back. To make this effective, therefore, each main depot – Haywards Heath was our local one in Gordon Road – had a series of small lock up garages, dotted round the countryside at the ends of routes.  Ours was at Chelwood Gate, just below the Red Lion in Beaconsfield Road, and there were others in Bolney, Handcross, Hassocks and Scaynes Hill.

These outstations were known internally as ‘Dormy Sheds’, presumably with some sort of ‘dormitory’ connotation, and each had its own small band of drivers and conductors to operate its services.  As per the rota, the first morning crew would arrive on foot or cycle, unlock the garage and take the relevant vehicle out to the start point.  Few Dormy Sheds accommodated more than two vehicles, and offered no facilities other than water and oil for top up purposes.  Fuel was sourced en route and each bus would ply to and fro all day until the last incoming one at night was returned and locked away ready for the next morning.
A good proportion of bus crews began their careers around 1946/7, as they were demobbed after the war, and were drawn from areas close to the point at which they were employed.  After all, there were no buses to get them to work!  With most of the community using buses on a regular basis, and the staff being local residents, everybody knew them, which took care of the quality control side of things and ensured the fare paying customer was satisfied.  Any crew guilty of missing passengers through running early etc. would certainly get it in the neck soon afterwards.

But these halcyon days were to come to an end in the Sixties.  At some point, possibly with an impending nationalisation in prospect for January 1969, a decision was taken that the lack of supervision at the Dormy Sheds was not in line with current management principles.  The fact that a man going sick overnight would engage a colleague to stand in for him, a) ensured any such request was absolutely genuine, and b) kept the service running – but such unofficial actions were very much taboo and the Dormy Sheds were closed down.  Staff were integrated into the parent depot on a bespoke rota system of their own, and vehicles were despatched from, and returned to, Haywards Heath thereafter.

Then the new National Bus Company edicts started to emerge, and accountants began compiling reams of statistics.  Amongst the surveys was one on individual routes and each journey on them, the intention being to weed out the uneconomic ones.  However this was where the closure of Dormy Sheds had a disastrous effect.  Early morning journeys could absorb the costs of running a vehicle out to the start point empty because a healthy supply of workers and commuters were always to be had, but the ‘last’ buses out to the villages in the evenings had only leisure traffic on them and the empty run back to Haywards Heath scuppered any chances they may have had to be profitable.

Figures ruled and many such timings were deleted from the timetable, leaving no way for folk to get home from the cinema, or off late trains from Brighton for ice hockey matches.  With no means of getting home, and taxis being a luxury reserved for emergencies and special occasions only, the early evening outbound journeys began to suffer too so, not to be deprived of a social life, the motivation was there to invest in one’s own transport, preferably of the four wheeled kind.  Once a small car was available outside one’s door, there was little point in not using it for work as well, and any journeys wives might have made by bus for shopping were now arranged for weekends when the car wasn’t in use for menfolk to get to work.

Naturally, what one family had, the rest hankered after and the days of the rural bus would never return.  No-one would have thought that the day the doors clanged shut on Chelwood Gate garage, life would be changed for ever – but there was a twist to the tale.  Whenever an opportunity presented itself, the NBC Property Division would sell the Dormy Sheds off and, some years after the closure, a suited man met a potential buyer in Chelwood Gate to show him the property.  The old rusty door creaked open but, instead of finding an empty space, there, bedecked in dust and cobwebs, was a bus that everyone had forgotten was there – much to the acute embarrassment of the Chief Engineer who was left to explain it.

Photos  kindly provided by Peter Dann and the  Southdown Enthusiasts' Club.
Click on a photo to enlarge

Number 32 to Uckfieldin the 1960's

Number 36 to East Grinstead

Number 30 to Chelwood Common

'Dormy' shed at Chelwood Gate

Larger 6-wheeled bus used during WW2 when many Canadians were stationed at Chelwood Gate

Waiting for the bus at Haywards Heath

Earlier Buses

Used 1946 until 1952.

Photographed c1934

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