From carriers to motor buses
Village bus services had developed from the older carrier system. Carriers took produce and parcels to market, collected purchases and also carried passengers. During the 1920s William John Powell ran from Loxwood to Guildford in a Ford Model T with fourteen seats, while Wesley Bernard Hempstead operated to Horsham on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. George Weller later provided a regular Horsham service through Alfold and Bucks Green and extended it through Ifold to Plaistow. Jesse William Wise took over in 1932 and used the name Sunbeam Bus Service.
Fred and Mary Kilner take over Sunbeam
Fred Henry Kilner had been running Woodlea Garage and Stores at Clemsfold on the Guildford-Horsham road. Jesse William Wise regularly bought petrol and tyres there on account, and the unpaid bill increased. Fred sold Woodlea Garage to Horsham tyre dealer Ernest James Barnard, then used the proceeds to buy the Sunbeam service and its Dodge bus for £450 in April 1933. The Traffic Commissioner approved the transfer from 31 May.
The new timetable provided six journeys each way between Loxwood and Horsham from Monday to Saturday, with three continuing to Plaistow. Four journeys ran on Sundays and there was a late Saturday service. Fred soon added a twenty-seat Bedford coach with Duple bodywork and adopted a grey-and-green livery. School contracts carried children to Wisborough Green and Billingshurst, and a Sunday contract took Roman Catholic passengers to church at Pulborough. Excursion licences brought trips to Bognor Regis, Littlehampton, Worthing, Brighton, Southsea, Eastbourne, Hastings, London and the Aldershot Military Tattoo.
The former coal merchant William Cole’s yard became the operating base. The fourteen-seat Dodge was kept there, and a wooden garage was added as the fleet increased. Fred and Mary moved to Haltings in 1934 and then to the new house called Gaywood beside the depot in 1938. By 1939 the yard normally held about eight buses and coaches.
A busy village service
Figures for 1935 show how quickly the business had grown. Sunbeam issued 39,142 tickets, ran 4,276 journeys and covered 57,800 service miles. The Loxwood-Horsham section carried the strongest traffic for work, school, shopping and railway connections. Busy journeys sometimes needed two duplicate buses, and one conductor could collect fares across all three vehicles as they travelled towards Horsham.
One passenger at Plaistow tried to board with a live calf. Fred allowed chickens in baskets but refused the calf. On another evening he came across an Aldershot & District conductor who had been left behind after taking a parcel into a public house. Fred caught the other bus and returned its conductor. Mary Kilner also drove the buses when required. She held a public-service-vehicle licence and drove the family taxis, including two Buicks. Their daughter Freda later obtained a conductor’s licence and was remembered locally as another member of the family who drove buses.
War comes to the route
The Second World War changed both the passengers and the work. One Sunbeam driver was called up, while the district filled with evacuees, military units and civilian war workers. The local memoir Ifold, Loxwood & Plaistow records evacuated families living in huts and converted garages at Ifold, a searchlight battery beside the Plaistow Road, women of the Women’s Land Army, Canadian servicemen and Polish airmen. Tanks using the roads through Ifold enlarged the existing potholes.
Sunbeam also carried members of the City of London Yeomanry at Rudgwick Camp, service personnel based at Alfold and food-rationing staff working at Harsfold Manor. Ordinary village journeys continued alongside these wartime contracts. Replacement vehicles became difficult to obtain. Fred bought several second-hand buses, including three Bedfords in 1940, an Opel coach in 1942 and an elderly Albion in 1943. When he applied for two new Bedford utility buses, the Ministry of War Transport authorised only one. Its plain wartime body used fewer scarce materials than the coachwork of the 1930s.
Hants & Sussex moves in
Wartime conditions also brought competition for routes. Hants & Sussex Motor Services had expanded by carrying military traffic and buying smaller operators. Managing director Basil Williams wanted the Loxwood service, and his chief mechanic Paddy O’Sullivan approached Fred. Running the business through the war had placed heavy demands on the Kilner family and the fleet needed further investment.
Fred agreed terms of £1,000 for two buses and £3,000 for the goodwill of the stage service. In January 1945 Fred and Mary became directors of the company renamed F. H. Kilner (Transport) Ltd. The Sunbeam name remained on the road, and in July 1945 the timetable increased to an hourly service between Horsham and Plaistow for much of the day.
An hourly service – with restrictions
From 9 July 1945 buses left Horsham for Plaistow at 8.22 a.m. and then hourly until 9.22 p.m. Plaistow departures began at 8.27 a.m. and continued hourly until 8.27 p.m. A special weekday bus left Loxwood at 7.35 a.m., reached Alfold five minutes later, Bucks Green at 7.55 and Horsham at 8.18. For villagers who had depended on a much thinner pre-war timetable, the hourly pattern gave far more choice for shopping, work and railway connections.
The new timetable also exposed an old licensing problem. Aldershot & District held protected stopping rights between Bucks Green and Horsham, so some Kilner buses could not carry passengers for short journeys over that section even when seats were empty. In March 1946 a petition bearing one hundred signatures complained that local people were left standing while buses passed them. The Regional Transport Commissioner held an inquiry at Horsham Town Hall. The dispute belonged to the tightly regulated bus industry of the period, when each operator held rights over particular routes and stopping places and another company could not simply pick up every passenger it passed.
A new driver at Loxwood Garage
Ifold, Loxwood & Plaistow records the post-war service in detail. Its author had driven lorries during the war and joined the Loxwood depot as a bus driver in early 1946. On her first day a car came out near the Clemsfold turning to Warnham and she avoided a collision. Some passengers had been uneasy about an unfamiliar woman driving their bus; the incident quickly changed their view.
The early shift began at 6.30 in the morning. The bus had been parked overnight at Loxwood Garage below Linden House and was driven empty to Plaistow Church for the seven o’clock start. A shift could take the bus into Horsham three times. Timetables mattered, but village habits mattered too. At Ifold Stores the bus often waited while passengers came down the road, some still eating breakfast. Passengers expected to be set down near their own gate and might call “not here, up there” after asking the driver to stop.
One evening a regular passenger travelled to a Whist Drive in Horsham and asked to be collected from the Civic Restaurant at ten o’clock. The conductress went inside twice to fetch him before the bus finally left. He and his partner had won the top prize of 32 shillings, but his taxi home also cost 32 shillings.
The winter of 1947
The same memoir records the winter of 1947. Heavy snow was followed by rain, ice and further snow, and severe conditions lasted for weeks. German prisoners of war from Kirdford and Wisborough Green were sent with picks and shovels to clear the Plaistow Road. The driver and her conductress passed food and cigarettes to the working parties from the bus.
Loxwood Garage had no mains water. Manager Tom Edwards dug a large hole to collect water for the radiators each morning. Antifreeze was unavailable, so the water was drained every evening. In the worst weather the driver could no longer turn the starting handle normally and remembered cranking the bus with her feet “like I would a motor bike”. These were ordinary service days: the bus still had to reach Plaistow, Loxwood and Horsham through the snow.
The end of Sunbeam
Mary transferred her shares in the stage-service company to Basil Williams in March 1946, and Fred later sold his holding. The coaching side became Sunbeam Coaches (Loxwood) Ltd, with the coaches and Loxwood garage valued at £4,500. Fred remained a director for a time but withdrew from daily management and moved from Gaywood to Tismans Common in October 1947. Victor Candish then managed the Loxwood operation from Hazelwood beside the depot.
By 1950 the Horsham-Plaistow route was Service 31. The trade journal Commercial Motor described Hants & Sussex’s regular stage services as the year-round “breadwinners”, summer duplicates as the “butter”, and coaching and private hire as the “jam”. The Loxwood vehicles moved between these different jobs as demand required.
Hants & Sussex encountered serious financial problems in 1954. For Loxwood passengers the end came on Tuesday 21 December. The final journey over Fred Kilner’s original route left Horsham for Plaistow at 9.53 p.m. A Union Jack was fixed to the bonnet at half-mast, and a placard in the window read “Sentenced to Death”. Sunbeam Coaches entered voluntary liquidation the following year.
