Today I went with my old friend J to the Oxford Bus Museum, which is actually in Hanborough, a ten minute train drive away from Oxford. J goes there four times a year, whenever he makes the long journey from the south coast of England where he lives. He was a bus driver himself in the 1950s and later, so is full of amazing anecdotes about life on the buses. I couldn't have asked for a better guide to the museum!
Unfortunately for my readers, I didn't take any notes, and anyway am way too exhausted after my adventurous weekend to write detailed blogposts, so you are just going to ahve to go yourself and do the best you can on your own. I did take lots of photos, and have cut and pasted a link to the museum website, so I really do hope you will go one day.
http://www.oxfordbusmuseum.org.uk/
The museum has buses from the earliest days of bushood to the 1980s. I even found a bus I used to commute daily to London while I was working in the City in the 1990s! I got quite nostalgic, though in those days there was no air conditioning and the journey was seriously miserable in summer.
Also part of the museum is the Morris Motors Museum, which illustrates the work of the great car manufacturer and philanthropist William Morris. William Morris was a truly amazing man - for example, when he heard in 1938 a plea on the radio for an iron lung he offered a part of his car factory to produce them; in total he donated 5,000 iron lungs!
http://blog.sciencemuseum.org.uk/collections/2013/03/07/the-man-behind-the-motor-william-morris-and-the-iron-lung/
The museum also runs tours in old buses on certain days, and we were lucky! After having spend some time looking over the museum, and having a cup of tea and toasted teacakes at the cafeteria, which looks rather like the ones that were used by bus drivers in the olden days - they even have black toilet seats, haven't seen one of those in ages! - we took a little jaunt around Oxfordshire in a bus from the 1950s. It did rather rattle us about, but was most enjoyable.
All in all it was rather a wonderful trip into the past, and I liked it much better than, gasp! large museums like the Louvre or British Museum. It is small and manageable, staffed by volunteers who are very knowledgeable and clearly love being there, and charmingly old-fashioned. There is none of the slickness of the large museums, and certainly not the hordes of visitors one encounters elsewhere. It is just an extremely interesting, well managed, lovely little time capsule.
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| The fate of all too many old buses |
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| Old bus seat |
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| Oxford Gloucester Green central bus station |
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| Bus from 1013 |
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| Gas lamp |
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| Oil lamp |
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| Bus I used to take |
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| I always sat behind the driver, in case they got lost or needed my advice! |
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| Oh how I remember those seats! |
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| New additions to the museum are refurbished by volunteers |
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| That's what the bus looked like we took a tor in |
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| Notice the handle to the right? That was used to change the banner that showed where the bus was going |
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| Very unusual Morris Band Bus - the back of the bus has a second story, for musical instruments |
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| Inside the Morris Motors Museum |
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| Morris made lots of different vehicles - here is a fire engine |
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| The Iron Lung project |
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| And here the cycle museum - some very old examples! |
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| Children's cycles from the 1910s |
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| Morris cars.... |
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| J's father had one of those |
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| Complete with window wiper |
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| This is a pick-up truck! |
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| Gas tank in front of car .... |
