Affectionately known for many years as either the "Rossmore Flyer" or latterly the "Monkeys Hump and Heavenly Bottom Express", this route linked the Upper Parkstone shops with the district known as Rossmore, passing on the way through the locations mentioned in its nicknames. All these places being in the town of Poole in the county of  Dorset.

This is a route I have known as man and boy, as passenger and driver.  Over the years, it was my good fortune to be involved in the management of this service on two different occasions.  I worked with three of the four independent companies that took over the operation of the service after the original founder, Miss Foott the racehorse trainer, retired from the business with advancing years. 

The story of the Rossmore Bus Service starts back in the 1920's when one of Poole's great characters came to live at nearby Sandbanks after serving as a driver-mechanic in the First World War.   Louie Foott (later to become Mrs Louie Dingwall) arrived in town with a Ford Model T presented to her by the Canadian army.   She became one of the first women in the country to obtain a PSV drivers licence.  The Model T and other similar vehicles were used initially on  services from Sandbanks - where she both lived and trained race horses - to Poole and County Gates.  These early vehicles were named Henry I, Henry II, through to Henry VIII, and then the names continued with the wives of that merry monarch!  Another operator on these routes for a while at this time was Herbert Rendell of Parkstone, who withdrew in 1929 to concentrate on his Cosy Coaches business (which firm figures in this story again in later years).  

But the principal strong competition on the Sandbanks routes was from Hants & Dorset (now Wilts & Dorset), and eventually an agreement was reached with them in 1929 whereby Louie withdrew and concentrated on the Rossmore route she had started a few years previously.   This hilly but busy route of but one and three quarter miles length started at the shops in Upper Parkstone ("up on hill"), and ran down along Albert Road through "Heavenly Bottom" and then up another very steep hill to "Monkeys Hump", before turning left to run along Rossmore Road, to terminate at the Gospel Hall.   After some years it was extended to the corner of Brixey Road and eventually in 1949 it went a short distance further along Rossmore Road into the then new council housing development at Trinidad Estate.  The route length of one and three quarter miles was thus attained!   For a few years from 1949 on until the mid 1950s three buses were scheduled all day on this busy route to maintain a ten minute frequency.  A far cry from the early years when the route had ended in gorse heathlands near a gypsy camp along Rossmore Road, before many of the houses were built - but Louie saw the future potential and was proved right.  

Largely forgotten is the original 1930 plan to extend Miss Foott's route south across Ashley Road along Madeira Road, Alexandra Road and Vale Road to the latter's junction with Bournemouth Road, and then Archway Road to Penn Hill Corner and further on to the seafront at Branksome Chine.  If this had happened the route would have been more than twice as long, but nothing was to come of this, probably because of objections from Hants & Dorset who had just made the agreement about the Rossmore service.  Even a more modest and apparently innocuous route extension just to Vale Road - that would have linked a few more residential roads to the shops - was seemingly refused.  Perhaps because the terminus there would have been only 200 yards walk from Sharp Jones Pottery at Branksome, then a major employer in the area.

The Rossmore route became the only independently operated town service in the Borough of Poole, with all the other routes being run by Hants & Dorset.  A great selection of characters were involved over the years.  There was Louie herself, still training race horses (a predominantly male occupation by long tradition!) at Sandbanks well into her 80s.  Peter Archer, whose father drove the Rossmore Bus in wartime years, recalls that two of the horses were called 'Pink Stripes' and 'Pinky's Sister'. Louie would often pop up to Parkstone unexpectedly in her horse-box to check on the buses and drivers.  A long standing driver for many post-war years was Eric, a Polish ex-serviceman.  Peter Holmes remembers working as a trainee fitter for a while in the fifties, servicing the "Rossmore Flyers" from an often flooded pit in Kitchers Coal Yard off  Rossmore Road.  And as a schoolboy I had many pleasant rides on Saturday mornings in the mid-fifties, unofficially helping the driver of utility-bodied Bedford OWB BFX32 to issue tickets from the then new Ultimate machines whilst working busy 'shorts' to and from the Rossmore Hotel!  BFX32 was new to Sheasby of Corfe Castle in 1943, and soon passed to Bere Regis & District in 1944. Acquired by Rossmore in November 1954, and after three years use was sold locally to Rogers Transport (haulage contractors) in September 1957 and broken for spares. One of my all-time favourite buses! 

The business was incorporated as the Rossmore Bus Company Ltd in 1947.  In the late 1940s and early 1950s, thoughts of expansion were in the air.  In August 1947 an application was made for a circular service, to be worked in both directions alternately by one vehicle, down Albert Road, along Sunnyside Road and back up Churchill Road to the Upper Parkstone shops.  It is unclear whether this actuall ran or not but nothing much came of this, and Churchill Road eventually got a bus, but only for a few years from 1952 to 1954, and then only five or six times a day.  It started from Jubilee Road by the Regal Cinema and the Ashley Road shops, and went down hilly Churchill Road and Victoria Crescent to the bottom of Southill Road - a point in Heavenly Bottom about a quarter mile west of the main route running along Albert Road.  I remember a hand painted sign in Jubilee Road with a list of the departure times and recall being told by one of the drivers that the extra route was resourced by pinching a bus off the main route for ten minutes or so to provide a quick run down and back up again on the Churchill Road service.  In 1953 buses left Jubilee Road at 8.15, 9.10, 10.25 and 11.55am, 2.05 and 5.00pm weekdays only; returning from Southill Road five minutes later.  No service after 12 noon on Wednesdays (half day closing in Parkstone; the main Rossmore route was also reduced in frequency on Wednesday afternoons).

The competing applications went to traffic court to be heard by the Traffic Commissioners in the autumn of 1954.   And in the end, neither service started -  reportedly because of the poor condition of one of the roads which both services needed to use to reach Bourne Estate (Good Road - only about a quarter of a mile long but with two right angled corners in its short length).   Although Bourne Estate had Hants & Dorset services to both Bournemouth and Poole town centres by this time, it was to be over thirty years later with deregulation in the 1980s that a regular bus service eventually ran from there directly to the Upper Parkstone shops.  One cannot help but wonder if the simplest expedient might not have been for the borough council to have improved the short stretch of road in question  ..... or was that reason put forward simply as a face saver so that both the competing companies could withdraw their respective applications?

======== with many thanks to Dave Crowter and Angie Kitcher ========

Join us for a trip on the Rossmore Bus one hot Saturday ....