Book Review: Buses for London’s New Towns

Sunday 17th August 2025

The third review in this weekly trilogy of recently purchased books is a must read for anyone interested in the minutia of how bus networks develop to serve an expanding New Town over a period of three decades.

Anyone who has devoured one of Laurie Akehurst’s previous books on London Transport Country Buses will not be surprised to know this latest recently published volume entitled ‘Buses for London’s New Towns’ maintains his track record for providing a blow by blow detailed account in chronological order of changes introduced to bus routes in a defined area.

As its name implies this book’s defined areas are the six New Towns that fell inside London Transport’s Country Bus Area that, along with others elsewhere in Britain, were designated New Towns in the New Towns Act of 1946.

They are Crawley, Hemel Hempstead, Stevenage and Harlow with Hatfield and neighbouring Welwyn Garden City, which Laurie sensibly treats as one continuous area, added in 1948.

It was envisaged each New Town would grow from an average of around 10,000 (pre expansion, Harlow was the smallest at 4,500 and Hemel Hempstead the largest at around 20,000) to 60,000 or more by the 1960s with the first New Town residents arriving in the late 1940s/early 1950s.

The book is in two parts with each New Town given two chapters (one in each part). The first covers route developments in the London Transport era between the late 1940s and 1969 and the second covers the shorter London Country period between 1970 and 1977 when the book’s timeline ends. That’s when each location had a new network of bus routes marketed with local branding and a prefix letter for the town routes.

I always admire Laurie’s ability to describe changes to bus routes in a narrative and readable format rather than just present list after list in date order. It enables him to contextualise the changes to what else may have been happening at the time, but I have to admit I do skim read over some of the detail where my knowledge of local landmarks and road names is lacking.

However, the book holds a particular fascination for me as a north London child and teenager during much of the period covered which often involved trips out to the Hertfordshire countryside and the areas covered by this book. Furthermore my parental home moved to Hemel Hempstead in the early 1970s so although I’d ‘left home’ by then for university, frequent visits and holiday periods from studying meant I got to know the town’s route network well so paid close attention to that chapter.

Similarly in later years after moving to Brighton I got to know Crawley well and found the history of that town’s network very interesting to read not least the handover of routes from Southdown to London Transport as the network developed to serve the increasing population.

What I also very much like about this book are the excellent photographs and the many network maps from different years for each town which graphically show how the networks of bus routes developed.

Obviously the early photographs are in black and white with ones in part two in colour and they feature renowned photographers of the time including Alan B Cross and Peter Mitchell (he of ‘Served by Southdown’ fame) and mostly in part two by Mike Harris who has the most amazing collection of superb photographs he’s taken over the decades.

Supplementing Laurie’s comprehensive narrative you’ll enjoy 214 excellent photographs within the 192 page book and as well as the aforementioned maps there are many images of leaflets and publicity items including a short appendix of timetable panels from bus stops too.

Laurie explains how some of the New Towns developed new infrastructure including bus stations and bus garages. Hatfield, Stevenage and Harlow all gained new garages in 1959 (Hatfield and Stevenage) and 1963 (Harlow).

Hatfield’s replaced an old garage on the opposite side of the Great North Road with Stevenage replacing a garage in Hitchin and Harlow replacing one in Epping. Harlow’s garage still survives today and is owned and used by Arriva.

Interestingly Crawley had to wait until after the period covered by the book, in 1982, before gaining a new bus garage to replace the one opened in 1929 by East Surrey Traction Company. In 1948 just 13 vehicles ran out of the garage.

Hemel Hempstead’s bus garage at Two Waters also survived throughout the period covered by the book. In 1949 it had a Peak Vehicle Requirement of 46 which despite the growth in the town had only increased to 56 by 1962.

Notable developments covered by the book include the development of complex networks as residential areas expanded along with the introduction of driver only operation and the troublesome Merlin buses with their Autofare system of fare collection already discussed in ‘The London Merlins’ book review.

These new complex networks under constant development and expansion also saw a proliferation of route numbers denoting both new town routes and separate routes to serve industrial areas in these towns. A new series of 8xx route numbers was introduced simply because the 3xx and 4xx series were becoming used up. But in those days London Transoort loved its suffix letters to denote route variations and these proliferated in the New Towns.

But, as mentioned earlier, by the mid to late 1970s new networks based on a prefix letter – C (and C-line as a brand) in Crawley, H for Hemel Hempstead, G for Welwyn Garden City, T for Harlow and SB for Stevenage.

The SB concept came out of Superbus which was the high profile branding and flat fare arrangement introduced initially on just one route (809 Chells to the town centre) in 1971 and was an immediate hit with passengers.

Two years earlier in the dying days of London Transport’s control of Country Buses in December 1969 the revolutionary Blue Arrow service had begun in Stevenage to encourage workers in the industrial area of the town to use the bus and have a guaranteed seat, taxi bus style with a hostess on board too.

Another notable development in Harlow in 1974 was the Pick-Me-Up service, the forerunner of today’s DRT.

The 1950s to 1970s is a fascinating 30 year period to cover, all the more so as these six New Towns expanded. I looked up the current populations in each town with Crawley topping the list on 115,393 followed by Hatfield and Welwyn Garden City on 101,175. The other three are virtually the same with Stevenage on 89,023, Harlow on 88,958 and Hemel Hempstead on 85,629.

There’s no doubting which town of the six featured has the best bus network today – thanks partly to the proximity of Gatwick Airport. It would have been inconceivable back in 1948 that Crawley would develop in the way it has and how ironic that whereas Southdown ceded the territory in the 1960s to London Transport, today the town’s extensive and much admired network is run by the same company as manages Brighton and a significant part of Sussex.

More recent developments in the other five locations – the rise of uno, Central Connect and the ‘Red Group’ – are equally interesting to note.

In that context Laurie’s book records a fascinating period in history.

It was published by Capital Transport last year but is still available from all the usual outlets with a cover price of £35.

Roger French

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