Historical Sunday services without morning journeys

[Simon75]

I've recently been looking at some Crosville bus timetables from 70s/80s and noticed on Sundays not many ran in the morning, why was that ?

 

[TheGrandWazoo]

I've recently been looking at some Crosville bus timetables from 70s/80s and noticed on Sundays not many ran in the morning, why was that ?

Because shops weren't open so no shoppers nor staff to take in until the Sunday trading laws changed in the mid-1990s.

 

[overthewater]

Also wasn't every one in Church? I believe there used to be certain journeys on Sunday morning mainly to get people to church.

 

[Gloster]

In Wales wouldn’t it have been chapel?

 

[TheGrandWazoo]

Also wasn't every one in Church? I believe they used to be certain journey on Sunday morning mainly to get people to church.

In Wales wouldn’t it have been chapel?

Chapels or churches tend to be in most villages or towns and you don't need to travel that far to get to one.

 

[carlberry]

I've recently been looking at some Crosville bus timetables from 70s/80s and noticed on Sundays not many ran in the morning, why was that ?

As others have said there was an expectation that everybody was at church/chapel at the time and, with no shops, there was no reason to operate anything. Even into the 1980s in a lot of Crosville's area this would still have been the case and the company would have got a lot of bad press if it had started suggesting that drivers were being forced to work. The reform of Sunday trading laws faced a lot of opposition for the same reasons.

 

[Shaw S Hunter]

Not just Crosville. Lancashire United (the original LUT) had a similar policy regarding Sunday morning services. Even after being taken over and absorbed into GMT it was noticeable that the obviously ex-LUT services in the Bolton/Leigh/Swinton/Wigan areas had later Sunday starts than other services.

 

[ChrisC]

Because shops weren't open so no shoppers nor staff to take in until the Sunday trading laws changed in the mid-1990s.

Then once the Sunday trading laws changed and staff and shoppers needed to go in, Sunday services were axed completely on many routes. It isn’t just most rural routes as even some quite sizeable market towns now have no Sunday buses. The route through the village where I live used to have hourly buses from about 11am on a Sundays but for well over 20 years now nothing on Sundays or Bank Holidays.

 

[RT4038]

I think you may well find that the reason for this on many routes dates from a wartime edict from the Regional Traffic Commissioners to save mileage (initially to save fuel and then later, after Malaya was overrun, tyre rubber) and provincial bus services were all withdrawn [except for essential workers] before 1pm on Sundays. Bus companies were slow to restore this cut after the crisis ended and on many routes this was never reversed. [Presumably for the many reasons advanced above, Sunday morning patronage was low].

Having said this, looking at a 1936 timetable for my local area, many country routes had no Sunday service before about 2pm. Town service started about 10am, but after the war these had generally gone to a 1pm start. I would hazard a guess that in those times of working 13 out of 14 days, not having a Sunday morning shift was very convenient in the construction of the rota!

 

[Magdalia]

Rural Mid-Wales and North Wales had a strong sabbatarian influence, like the Highlands of Scotland. Parts of Mid-Wales and North Wales were "dry", meaning that the pubs did not open on Sundays. I'm surprised that Crosville ran any Sunday services at all in those areas.

 

[ChrisC]

Before the days of widespread car ownership Sunday afternoon, in many areas of the country, was traditionally the time when many people travelled by bus to visit relatives. With no shops open on Sunday mornings there was no need to travel anywhere before lunch. The Sunday dinner at home, as it was mainly called in those days, had much more importance than it does today and going out for Sunday lunch did not widely happen. Some people would walk to a local pub for a drink at lunch time before their meal. Then about 2pm lots of people would set off by bus to visit relatives, often staying for Sunday tea, and then return home in the evening. That’s certainly the way things were in the Nottinghamshire/Derbyshire coal mining areas when I was a child in the 1960’s. Buses ran fairly frequently from lunchtime until late evening and were quite busy. Car ownership reduced passenger numbers, morning services were never introduced when Sunday trading began, and eventually by the 1990’s many routes lost their Sunday bus service completely. Not connected with this, but many routes had a much better frequency on Saturday afternoons than they did during the week.

 

[Bletchleyite]

It was true of the railway too, not just buses, e.g. for many years (other than DalesRail) the first Sunday northbound train from Preston to Penrith or north thereof was about 1530.

Also only recently has there been a Sunday morning Fort William-Glasgow train, but there was a Citylink coach which was often fully booked.

 

[RELL6L]

I recall when I was in Oxford 1975-1978 the city services, which ran up to every 5 minutes during the week, ran every 90 minutes on Sunday morning with just one bus out on each of the major routes. At lunchtime they stepped up to every 30 minutes. This included the main Banbury Road, Iffley Road, Botley Road and Headington services. This was a surprise to me from London Country land where normal Sunday frequencies started much earlier.

 

[TheGrandWazoo]

Then once the Sunday trading laws changed and staff and shoppers needed to go in, Sunday services were axed completely on many routes. It isn’t just most rural routes as even some quite sizeable market towns now have no Sunday buses. The route through the village where I live used to have hourly buses from about 11am on a Sundays but for well over 20 years now nothing on Sundays or Bank Holidays.

In my experience, there are have been some fundamental changes for Sunday services and that you had 1986 (where many oddiities were lost). Post 1994, more Sunday daytime services did appear as shopping became more established. This was turbocharged by the Rural Bus Challenge funding in the early 2000s where a number of new services appeared. Some took root but others disappeared with the cutting of local government budgets.

If I look at my adopted county (Somerset), in the early 1990s, it had virtually no Sunday services and most of the ones it had were tenders running in from across the border from Avon. Taunton had 5 buses a day - 3 to Minehead and 2 were placement journeys to Glastonbury for tendered journeys via Wells to Bristol. Yeovil had an evening bingo bus. By the early 2000s, government money came in and suddenly towns that had had nothing for 15 years had all manner of services. When spending cuts meant the removal of subsidies, then there was a regression. Yeovil (pop >40k) lost its Sunday services as did smaller towns (Chard, Crewkerne) but places like Frome, Bridgwater, Taunton have more (for the time being) than they did. It was the same pattern in a number of shire counties.

One real change has been the decline of Sunday evening services. The demand from people going out drinking on a Sunday night has fallen off a cliff.

 

[TUC]

It was deregulation, and contracting of loss-making services which actually brought improvements to Sunday morning services. In Teesside it resilted in the council specifying a number of Sunday morning services which did not previously exist.

 

[43055]

Looking at the old Blue Bus timetables for between Derby and Burton only 1 bus ran on Sunday mornings on the route via Willington while the Etwall route didn't start until 1pm.

For a more recent example, I don't think trentbarton's amberline had a Sunday morning service until a few years back.