STANBRIDGE AND CRICHEL

The continuing story of the buses of Crichel and Witchampton

These routes have their origins in the horse drawn days of the 19th century, with an appropriately named carrier called Benjamin Carter.   It became  a motor bus service in the 1920s, run originally by Ernie Toomer of Manswood.  Ernie ran the routes for the best part of forty years, latterly with the help of his son Geoff.  In January 1958 the routes then passed to Reg Essex under the trading name Stanbridge Motor Services.

The Stanbridge Motor Services business subsequently passed in turn on Reg's retirement in April 1977 to a new owner John Walker (formerly the traffic manager of Cosy Coaches in Parkstone).  He inherited a motley collection of four vehicles: three Duple Fireflys and a somewhat unique Thames service bus VFN549 that had come to Dorset from an operator in Kent, Wren of Canterbury.  BOU205C was one of the vehicles transferred, a Ford Duple Northern C41F acquired by Essex in October 1973.

Following bus deregulation on 26th October 1986, the Cranborne via Verwood or via Crichel routes to Wimborne were expanded once again to run through to Poole each weekday, obviating the need to change to a Wilts and Dorset bus in Wimborne.  At this time the long established market route to Blandford from Witchampton was lost to Wilts and Dorset, and the Shapwick route introduced in 1980 was lost to Maybury Coaches.  A five days a week feeder service from Broomhill, Colehill and Cutlers Place connected with the Poole route in Wimborne Square.  The Salisbury route now needed two buses each Tuesday, one starting at West Moors and the other in Wimborne.  Only the latter operated on Saturday.  The Wednesday route to Ringwood was diverted to serve Verwood after leaving Alderholt.  A short lived Friday service was introduced between Poulner, Ringwood and Wimborne Market, which made use of the dead legs of a school contract - at least one day of the week!

Rob's coach: OKE398F, AEC Reliance - often used on the bus routes on a busy Friday!

photo from the Roger Grimley collection

But it was not long before these "out-of-area" operations were sold on again in November 1993, this time to Damory Coaches of Blandford, by then a recently acquired subsidiary of Wilts and Dorset.  Damory still operate to this day over considerably slimmed down versions of the Stanbridge routes (since August 2003 as part of the Go Ahead group).  The Cranborne - Wimborne route is their service 300, and was then still basically a four days a week shoppers / market bus type of service.

With passengers seemingly in constant decrease, there were renewed local authority concerns about the cost of the subsidies needed to support rural bus services. Thought was given to how services could continue to be provided practically. Damory Coaches still provided the 301 and 302 from Wimborne to Salisbury on Tuesday and Saturday, the 303 from Cranborne to Ringwood on Wednesday and the 325 from Gussage and St Giles to Blandford on Thursday.

But the major change started on 24th July 2006 with the progressive introduction of a flexibly routed 'Door to Dorset' replacement for the main Cranborne via Crichel (or via Verwood) to Wimborne 300 service, and also the Witchampton - Tarrants - Blandford route. This is run by community transport operator Nordcat of Sturminster Newton on behalf of the local authorities. This type of semi-public on-demand type of operation was favoured by Dorset County Council in this and several other parts of the county at the time. A seeming disadvantage is that would be passengers have to pre-register with the scheme as well as booking their journeys in advance by telephone - a major disincentive to travel by removing the possibility of a spontaneous unplanned trip! Apart from a regularly timetabled five days a week school run from Manswood and Witchampton to Wimborne, since 16th April 2007 the by then totally flexible operation offered pre-booked passengers from Crichel, Witchampton, the Gussages and St Giles a travel facility to Wimborne on Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday mornings, and to Blandford on Thursday.

Change came again on 8th April 2008 when the county council recognised the difficulties of advertising a service which may not be readily seen and identified. The service needed a higher profile in the community. So the Nordcat service became semi-scheduled and more places given as fixed time points, so that where stops were more or less always served and were on a direct run in to Wimborne it was no longer be necessary to pre-book. The stops in Verwood were thus always served and the bus departed from both Wimborne and Cranborne at fixed times. Tuesday and Friday reverted to a timetable similar to that operated prior to 2007 with shoppers journeys via both Witchampton and Verwood to Wimborne. In school holidays the first and last runs start in Handley. Wednesday journeys for the Gussages and the Crichels to Wimborne also reverted to a timetable similar to that in existence prior to 2007. On Thursday the service from Cranborne and Witchampton to Blandford via the Gussages, Crichels and Tarrants also became semi scheduled with fixed times from the Tarrants in to Blandford. A new Saturday service similar to the Tuesday and Friday route started from Handley and provided a return journey to Wimborne via Verwood. And it became possible to travel from Wimborne to visit some of the destinations in the surrounding countryside. 

Operation of the 300 Cranborne - Crichel or Verwood - Wimborne and the 319 Cranborne - Gussage - Witchampton - Blandford reverted to Damory Coaches of Blandford from April 2011 as normal fully timetabled services following difficulties experienced by operator Nordcat.  This - with similar alterations in the Dorchester, Maiden Newton, Cerne Abbas, Piddle Valley and Bovington areas as well - saw the virtual demise of pre-booked operation under the Door to Dorset banner - farewell to cumbersome pre-booking! The years went by until April 2016 when - as the result of funding cuts by Dorset County Council - all the ex-Stanbridge services disappeared apart from a single school run on the 300 from Witchampton to Wimborne and back.

In 1998 the yard at Stanbridge was taken over by Victory Tours (Adams) of Sixpenny Handley.  The Victory business passed to new owners in the autumn of 2004 and they have ceased to use Stanbridge as a base.  After 47 years no more buses sleep overnight in Stanbridge garage yard, so full of memories for me from my days working there.