Origins: early 20th Century

The 1900s through to the 1920s was a time of rapid, but very fragmented, expansion of motorised transport. Motorised vehicles were very much in their infancy. Many were very crude – and unreliable!

Court cases involving buses were quite commonplace, most involved not observing road traffic regulations, dangerous driving or overloading.

Barton Buses

The first name with a Little Eaton connection is Thomas Henry Barton, who had a fascinating life! He was born in 1866, the son of a Little Eaton quarry owner. At the age of 14, he was apprenticed to a saddler in Duffield, and at 15, he was apprenticed at Ruston Hornsby, Grantham who were excavator makers.

He was made homeless in Grantham at 17 years old and walked home to Little Eaton to work locally. Later, he moved to Manchester where he was involved with boat engineering, specifically with boilers. Next he took a job on a boat working his passage as an engineer to China, then another to Russia, then back home again to the UK. He then became involved in the repair of internal combustion engines in Nottingham, as well as taking classes at Nottingham University technical workshops.

By 1890 (now aged 24) he was back at Ruston Hornsby helping with the development of early diesel engines. He left about 1895 and was given a diesel engine as a parting gift. He returned to Little Eaton to take over the family quarry and used the engine to power a grinding drum.

His son TA Barton, known as Tom, started helping with the family business, and then the family moved to run a poultry farm near Mablethorpe due to Thomas’ ill health.

Thomas used a pony and trap to transport passengers from the station to the centre of Mablethorpe.

In 1897 whilst at an exhibition in London he saw a ‘motorised horse wagonette’ – and bought one; it was an 11-seat 9hp Benz (forerunner of Mercedes-Benz).

The image below is believed to be that 11-seat Benz:

It took three days for Thomas, Tom and Kate (Tom’s sister) to bring the Benz back to Mablethorpe where they operated it locally between 1897 and 1898.

By September 1898 the family were back in Little Eaton again, where the wagonette was used in the Derby area for hire and for a carrier’s service for goods, not passengers.

However, Thomas’s ill health returned again about 1900, so he sold the Benz and moved to Weston-super-Mare, where he bought an 1898 Granville charabanc and used it on excursions in and around Weston-super-Mare to Cheddar Gorge, Glastonbury and Wells.

In Weston-super-Mare, he upset the local horse carriage owners with his motorised charabanc, but he was eventually asked to manage their operations in 1903. However, he chose to leave as his health had improved again and he returned to Little Eaton.

He bought a quarry at Tansley to augment the family’s Little Eaton quarry and used the Granville to transport workers and goods between the two.

In 1905 Thomas bought a 20-seat Durham-Churchill, which son Tom was licensed to use for private hire in the Derby / Little Eaton area, but the Durham-Churchill was sold in 1908 when a good offer could not be refused.

Later in 1908 Thomas and Tom went to London and negotiated to buy a newer 28-seat Durham-Churchill which had worked the summer in Scarborough. They brought it back to Little Eaton and decided to place it onto a regular bus service, but from Long Eaton, via Beeston, to Nottingham;

Barton Transport had arrived!! – but not in Little Eaton!!

Other Operators

The Carlier Brothers, who ran a garage on the Alfreton Road, bought an old charabanc and removed the passenger body replacing it with a flat-bed for use as a lorry – or possibly it was used as both, running as a lorry during the week with the charabanc body being fitted over the weekend. This was quite a common practice with small operators in the 1910s and 1920s. However, at the bus archive in Walsall there does not appear to be any record of them operating as a public service.

The next Little Eaton operator was a Mr James David Mudie, who lived in Little Eaton and apparently bought a second-hand Ford TT 14-seat bus in 1927. It was almost certainly used for private hire, not bus services. It was last licensed in 1934 – apparently without replacement.

Oscar Stevenson {Eagle Bus Service} lived at Mayfield on Alfreton Road, which was probably his personal home, rather than a base from which to operate his company, though it was the registered address for the Eagle Bus Service.  The buses generally ran from Derby out towards the Dalbury Lees, Hollington and Trusley area, as well as some services to Findern and Spondon.

Trent Buses

Finally - Trent’s operations started with a company called Commercial Cars Hirers Limited, initially based in Ashbourne.  By 1913 the centre of operation had shifted to Derby and the Trent Motor Traction Company was formed on 31st October 1913.

Service route numbers were introduced in 1922 and the Derby to Alfreton service was given number 1. 

Also in 1922, Trent’s first bus station was opened in Albert Street, Derby, a converted furniture warehouse. It is believed that this was one of the first, if not the first, proper bus station in the country. Phipps District Omnibus Service, from Horsley Woodhouse, provided serious competition until they sold out to Trent in January 1929, removing a serious competitor from the road through Little Eaton. Another firm acquired in 1929 was Chapman from Belper. One of their services ran from Belper to Derby, via Holbrook and Little Eaton.

Pre-War

The 1930 Road Traffic Act sounded the death knell for many of the smaller bus companies due to increasing emphasis on maintenance standards and adherence to timetables and fare pricing; larger companies could comply, but the smaller companies couldn’t and many sold out to the large operators.

Barlow of Belper also ran a Belper to Derby service, via Holbrook and Little Eaton, and Trent purchased this company in 1932.

An early Trent service bus, and a 1930s Belper service, are shown in the pictures below.

Bus crash in Bottle Brook

In the early 1930s an incident resulted in a Trent bus running off the road and ending up in the Bottle Brook. It was recovered and repaired giving a few more years’ service to the company.

Service frequency had been steadily growing since the Derby to Alfreton first started and daily frequency by the mid-1930s had risen to between 10 and 15 minutes, with the last bus from Derby timed at 10:50 pm. Bus design had also been moving forward with increasing use of double deck buses of a much smoother, more curved outline.

1939 saw the outbreak of the Second World War. Supply of new vehicles was in the hands of the Ministry of War Transport and production was limited and rationed. With the use of more unskilled labour designs reverted to the harsher squarer shape of earlier buses and older vehicles were patched up and kept in service much longer than originally intended.  Service frequencies were cut back and evening services frequently abandoned altogether.

Once the war was over it took a few years before things returned to normal, but the years between 1948 and 1953 are often regarded as the bus industry’s ‘Golden Years’. However, by 1953 signs were showing of the boom slowing down. Double deckers gave way to single deckers.

In 1954 a new joint service started run jointly by Trent, East Midlands MS and Midland General Omnibuses. This ran from Derby, via Ripley, Alfreton and Mansfield, through to Chesterfield, now route 44. For the next couple of decades things didn’t change much, occasional reductions to some services and some service number changes. The combined route 44 reverted to a series of linked journeys and route 1 returned to Little Eaton.

1980s to present day

1982 saw a whole raft of changes with the 201 (formerly the number 1) becoming the 243/244/245 depending on the final destination and the routes travelled. 8/8A became the 125 and was extended from Heanor to Eastwood. The 1985 Transport Act foresaw the deregulation of bus services the following year and also provided for the privatisation of the National Bus Company. 

In 1989 Trent, by now-privatised, purchased the Barton Transport company, amalgamating their services under the Trentbarton name. In 1991 Trentbarton introduced the first of its ‘Rainbow’ routes.

More recently we have lost the 92 (or 9.2) service. Then the Amberline route, previously the 125, was shortened .    

Now all we have is the 7.1 from Derby to Belper and the Comet, coincidentally restoring a through connection from Derby to Chesterfield which had previously been lost.                                                                       

By Peter Tulloch