July 2022
I found a Barnsley FC fan site where people are reminiscing about various scraps with Port Vale fans over the years. (2002, Vale chairman bought me a pint after his fans duffed me up; early 1990s coach window put through in a Stoke housing estate; 1976 FA Cup – kidnapping a Vale fan onto a Barnsley fan bus after he was banging on all the windows looking for trouble. They let him off in one piece at Penistone, so that’s all right, then.)
[In 1966] buses parked at top of hill, 2 chippy rowe coaches from cudworth go down the hill. Port vale fans at bottom of hill all scattered as young Arthur rowe put his foot down and went through them. Our driver bill ( lived in pinfold cottages in cudeth ) slowed down and the vale fans bricked the coach.
I take “young Arthur” to mean the son of Arthur Rowe (1875-1951), one-time greengrocer (1911), founder of the bus and coach business, and cousin of my gt-gt grandfather (via Mary Musgrave).
Grimly, I also found from the Commercial Motor archive, that in October 1947, one of the company’s coaches lost control descending into Holmfirth, when its propshaft broke. The driver attempted to stop the vehicle but the brakes failed to respond, and the vehicle careered out of control. It crashed into the side of a warehouse, part of which collapsed on top of the coach. Nine of the coach’s occupants were killed, and the remaining 24 were injured. The driver on the day of the accident, a week-end employee, had been with the firm for about three weeks, testified Arthur at the MoT hearing.
Later, (found via an ‘old bus’ reasearcher, Joe, on Old Bus Photos) that the partners in the firm were accused of failing to maintain the braking system and “Finding the case proved, the magistrates’ imposed a £3 fine on each of the five defendants—partners in the business [including Arthur].”
The ill-fated coach was an AEC Regal, like my snap from the National Bus collection.
The crash still reverberates – from the (twice Eisteddfod winning) Bolsterstone Male Voice Choir website:
William Evans, still remembered with great fondness locally, led the choir for 30 years through difficult times, including the war years, and a tragic accident in 1947 in which Mr Evans’s father was among the nine people killed when a coach carrying choristers, relatives and supporters to a music festival careered out of control down a steep hill as they approached their destination of Holmfirth, crashing into a warehouse in the centre of the town. William Evans died in 1965 when his choir was on the brink of its greatest achievements.
The injured and dying were, says Yorkshire Live, tended by a young Estonian refugee. She married an injured chorister, and their son became secretary of the choir (as of 2017).
The buses were nationalised by 1970 (Hansard) but, still, I found this:
A coach carrying home sixty children and staff of St John’s Junior School, after a visit to Crich Tramway Museum, went out of control on a steep Derbyshire hill. The quick reactions of the driver, Mr Brian Macey of Arthur Rowe and Sons, saved the children when he ran the bus into a grass verge and trees.
Penistone AImanack: 15 Jun 1982
The pics are from a Barnsley history group – Rowe’s new yard, bought from a farm, 1960; the ‘Chippy Flyer’ Leyland; a Rowe coach, contemporary with the kidnap incident, latterly used as a home (photo: Flickr friend, Tim); .