SO our local motor-bus network did have its roots in the Sutton Manor district, as had been suspected all along by pensioner Daniel Cunningham (79) from Sherdley Park.

Daniel revealed - this page, April 22 - that he still has hazy boyhood memories of bus garages standing close to the old Sutton Manor Colliery. And he wondered whether this was the springboard for the great leap from local tram to motor-bus business.

Now, we have photographic evidence, plus response from a couple of local correspondents, supporting this theory.

The St Helens Transport Museum has kindly come up with a blast-from-the-past picture featuring a Leyland single-decker manufactured in 1919. It's shown outside the Sutton Manor depot which ceased operations in 1928 with the opening of Tolver Street depot, near St Helens town centre.

The bus, with its distinctive B 8841 registration, passed into the St Helens Corporation fleet, continuing to give sterling service until it was scrapped in 1931.

The pioneering Sutton Manor service first began in 1914 when St Helens Council became concerned about the lack of passenger transport connecting the growing mining communities of Clock Face and Sutton Manor.

"There was," says the transport museum spokesman, "a St Helens-to-Widnes railway service which served Clock Face, but Sutton Manor, some distance away, was isolated."

That's when local councillor Thomas Abbott stepped forward, having been given the task of remedying the situation.

He managed to persuade County Carriers, a firm controlled by the Dromgoole family (equally well-known in bygone times as local newspaper and charabanc firm proprietors) to introduce a bus service running between Market Street, in St Helens town centre, and Sutton Manor. This was up and running by June, 1914. Meanwhile, with a view to developing this business, a company separate from County Carriers was set up.

"This," adds our museum source, "was St Helens and District Motor Service Ltd. It was registered, as Dan Cunningham states, on January 13, 1915, with nominal capital of £3,000 in £1 shares."

The first five directors, who had set up the company, were prominent local people whose names are still vaguely familiar to this day - Cuthbert Dromgoole; mining engineer, John Robinson of Newton-le-Willows; James Robinson, a colliery manager from Thatto Heath; motor engineer, Walter Marshall of St Helens; and Councillor Thomas Abbott, a Sutton coal agent.

Three years later, the Dromgoole family and Walter Marshall sold their shares to the Robinsons and Abbotts. They, in turn, were bought out by St Helens Corporation in 1927 with eight single-deck vehicles of various types included in the deal.

Our big motor-bus debate, triggered by Dan Cunningham, also intrigued reader J. Glover of Swinburne Road, Dentons Green. He ventures that St Helens Corporation started its own permanent motor-bus service only in August, 1923 (nine years after the introduction of the enterprising St Helens & District Motor Service fleet) with vehicles plying the Eccleston and Haresfinch routes, via College Street.

Its expansion was slow but steady, says JG, and after the buy-out the Sutton Manor-based drivers were then transferred to the corporation's transport department.

Daniel Cunningham's earlier observations also captured the attention of Edith Carter of Mill Lane, Sutton Leach, who still has clear memories of the Sutton bus routes in operation (with their boneshaker single-deckers) way back in the 1920s and 30s.

In those times, it took a lot of legwork to reach the limited number of passenger stops, especially for folk living down Mill Lane. These route marches were eased by more handily-located stops when the area became more built-up and additional shops took shape.

MANY thanks to one and all for ringing the bell on an old-time motor-bus subject that promises to run and run!

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.