Ribble Motor Services
The name of Preston’s river was chosen in 1919 as the title of a bus company whose territory eventually covered much of old Lancashire as well as parts of the fondly remembered counties of Westmorland and Cumberland. It developed from a small business started by Mr J Hodson of Gregson Lane when in 1910 he started running a service to and from Preston using open topped double deck buses. Ribble Motor Services grew rapidly and such was its confidence that a new head office was opened in 1937 at Frenchwood Avenue, Preston, and the original building is still there. Ribble Bus Station, Preston c.1968
Many of the services operated by its red buses were centred on Tithebarn Street Bus Station which was built in 1928 and ceased to be used in 1969 with the opening of Preston’s current bus station, of such fame and importance that it is now a listed building noted by architects around the world for its Brutalist style. Blackpool was a popular destination, and in the 1930s Ribble’s routes linked the cotton towns of Burnley, Blackburn, Chorley and Bolton with the
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seaside by providing direct bus services while those travelling from other Lancashire mill towns had to change buses in Preston. In the early 1950s, the company’s charismatic general manager, Horace Bottomley, changed all of this when he created through services by linking routes between the Fylde coast and Preston with separate services to Burnley, Blackburn, Rochdale, Chorley, Leyland and Wigan.
Before the Second World War, Ribble competed fiercely between Preston and Blackpool with a much smaller Preston concern, Scout Motor Services, which had its origins in a business set up by James Watkinson in 1919. Scout’s ivory, mauve and black liveried buses ran from a small bus station in Starchhouse Square. The square was also used by other local bus operators, Bamber Bridge Motor Services (BBMS) and Viking Motors. International conflict prompted an end to local hostilities, and a wartime agreement survived into peacetime with Ribble and Scout working together in providing a coordinated timetable linking the two towns.
A return ticket purchased on a Ribble bus could be used on a Scout bus on the journey back. Ribble needed Scout’s cooperation in delivering Horace Bottomley’s vision, and thus, the two companies shared several cross-Preston services meaning that Scout buses could be seen well away from the
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Ribble Pilot