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Thursday, 29 November 2018

Old Worthing Bus

I quite often receive emails regarding bus workings but this one came as a complete surprise. Whilst not locally related it may be of interest to our south coast readers.

John Hutchinson was recently in contact and some locals may remember the name as he was a one-time editor of  the ECTS magazine Terminus. He is now Secretary of the John Jarrold Printing Museum in Norwich and receives all manner of requests, including the one he is about to share with us here.

"As a regular peruser of your excellent website and knowing of your interest in buses in the Worthing area, attached is a print of something a little different which I hope will tickle your fancy, namely a Worthing Motor Services bus dating from the early 1900s, apparently on its way to the Lake District!

The story behind the picture dates from last year when we were contacted by a Roger Warwick, residing, I think, in Northamptonshire. He had purchased a printer's plate on ebay showing the vehicle concerned and got in touch with us to see if we could provide a decent print of it - which we dutifully obliged him with.

Naturally, I enquired if he knew anything about the the plate and received the following reply:

'I don't know the history of the plate - I can only assume that Worthing Motor services, to whom the vehicle was new in April 1914, had the plate made for publicity purposes. The chassis of the bus was requisitioned by the Military in September 1914, so it had a very short life in the form seen on the plate.'

So, he had obviously done some pretty impressive researching to come up with that information."

My thanks to John for the information and the illustration. No doubt the journey from and to the south coast must have been 'interesting' to say the least!

Roy

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