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 » Other bus services in the Vale of Clwyd » The Arriva network in North Denbighshire 
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100 YEARS OF MOTOR BUSES
IN DENBIGHSHIRE
1911- 2011
It was 100 years ago, in 1911, that motor buses began operating in Denbighshire.
Trading as White Rose, Rhyl entrepreneurs Brookes Bros began running motor buses & charabancs. They had previously operated horse-drawn vehicles. The firm eventually expanded to operate 89 motor buses over a large area. The brothers also sold and repaired motor vehicles of all descriptions.
 Early double decks of the 1920s were always open top, whatever the route and whatever the weather. This fact was very useful in sunny Rhyl. Indeed, open tops continue to be popular today. During the 2011 summer season, Arriva operates half-hourly with open toppers between Pensarn, Towyn, Rhyl, Prestatyn and Talacre |
White Rose bus services expanded rapidly after the First World War. By then, Rhyl attracted thousands of summer visitors. As early as the 1860s, William Davis in his “Handbook to the Vale of Clwyd” described Rhyl as “a salubrious watering hole”.
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In the 1920s, White Rose opened branches in Prestatyn & Denbigh. They ran bus services as far south as Ruthin & Cyffylliog and west to Abergele. At Holywell & Mostyn, they met the expanding might of Crosville Motor Services. Not even Crosville could penetrate White Rose’s territory, however.
 Toastracks such as this operated in Rhyl, especially along the Prom, in the 1920s and even into the early 1930s |
Meanwhile, in Rhyl, White Rose’s seasonal bus services were often very frequent. In the mid-1920s, another motor bus operator challenged White Rose. This was the Rhyl & Potteries Motor Co, who sold to White Rose within two years.
White Rose met with stiff competition from Mr W Edwards of Denbigh, trading as Red Dragon. Red Dragon operated to Rhyl, Ruthin, Corwen and even Cyffylliog. Red Dragon had purchased the much smaller Denbigh bus business of Mr R Smith.
 This shot is of Llandyrnog. The successor service 76 operated by M & H Coaches runs just as frequently as in the 1920s! |
Both White Rose and Red Dragon sold to the London, Midland & Scottish Railway in 1930. This was at a time of great change in the bus industry, with the Traffic Commissioners about to licence & regulate buses, routes, drivers & conductors for the first time. The LMS was by now the owner of Crosville. White Rose & Red Dragon buses were immediately transferred to Crosville. Crosville’s famous general manager W J Crosland-Taylor commented in 1948 that the LMS had paid a price “out of all proportion to their value” for White Rose. The Brookes family may have felt differently!
 Rhyl front in the 1920s |
In 1933, a similar purchase in Llangollen & Wrexham transferred another operator’s buses to Crosville, giving Crosville a virtual monopoly in current Denbighshire.
That monopoly was only challenged from 1986 when buses were deregulated. Arriva buses are the successor to Crosville, though GHA Coaches and M & H Coaches now exclusively operate a number of former White Rose & Red Dragon bus routes.
 In addition to bus services, White Rose ran "Arm Chair Motor Coaches" daily throughout the beauty spots of North Wales |
There are three lasting legacies to the pioneering spirit of the Brookes Bros’s bus services. Arriva’s Rhyl garage, Albion Works, is on the same site White Rose used for maintenance. The old bus garage that still stands at Lenten Pool, Denbigh, was built in 1930 on land owned by White Rose. Rhyl’s White Rose shopping centre takes its name after the bus operator that started motor buses 100 years ago. It was on that site that White Rose had a garage and bus station.
Acknowledgements
Photographs copyright Omnibus Society Collection. Information from the Denbighshire Record Office, John Carroll, “Crosville Motor Services Part 1: the first 40 years”, 1995, Carroll & Roberts; and “Crosville: the sowing & the harvest”, 1948, W J Crosland-Taylor.
