Barton Transport Limited Concrete Bus Stop Post Survivor

By Chris Hunt

There is an odd-looking concrete post sited between St George’s School on Kesteven Road and the top end of Lincoln Road in Stamford. It is a Barton Bus Stop post; a timetable panel would have been attached to the flat areas.  They were manufactured in the company’s own concrete casting plant in Nottingham. At one time, such posts would have been found all over the town and in some of the surrounding villages where Barton Transport Ltd. had routes. By the 1970s Barton Transport Ltd. was the largest independent operator of buses in the UK.

Barton’s headquarters were in Chilwell where they had a large depot. Other bus depots were sited across the East Midlands. In 1961 Barton’s acquired Cream Buses which had been established in Stamford in 1924 by Mr W. H. Patch, when he left the employ of Peter Brotherhood’s in Peterborough.

Cream Buses claimed that they had over a million passengers a year in the late 1950s, with a fleet of twenty-two buses and coaches. On being bought out by Barton’s the familiar Cream Buses were replaced with newer red ones. One of the reasons was that Barton’s had a diesel fleet, whilst Cream Buses had been fuelled by petrol. The depot in Stamford, off Radcliffe Road in Halliday’s Yard, remained in use.

Barton’s remained independent until 1989 when they were bought out by Trent Buses, with the firm being rebranded Trent Barton, although buses branded as Barton were still running between Stamford and Oakham in 2000.

Few of the concrete bus stops have survived; locally there is the one on Kesteven Road, another in Marholm and a couple in Wittering. They must have been introduced in the 1960s soon after Barton’s took over Cream Buses. This type of post gradually fell into disuse as a result of nationally agreed standards for bus stops which were introduced in the 1970s.

Today the bus stop on Kesteven Road is still served by a bus, the Stamford Hopper Service No. 182.

Note If you come across any others locally could you please contact the author through the Stamford Local History Website messaging portal.

A print version can be downloaded HERE