Small - mostly rural - bus companies are one of the things that have made me think hardest about #LocalHistory, being a historian and how we describe histories of place. And it's thanks to a peer reviewer for @VCH_London. How so? Read on. https://twitter.com/dartmoorarchive/status/1301881481472729089

My first editing job with @VCH_London was, happily, for a book on a part of Somerset I know well, having been brought up in the nearest town, Yeovil. The 10 or so parishes covered had a main road, the A303, and clipped by the railway [continues]

And so when the text came back from peer review, the question asked was 'There's no railway presence, how did people get about before the private car?'

Of all the things to ask a medievalist. [continues]

But because it was an area I knew, though haven't lived in for a while, I knew the answer was 'by bus'. Now, 'pers. comm.' won't cut it as an answer, but, being local, I had the advantage of at least knowing the names to look for. In this case, 'Wakes Services'. [continues].

And I knew this because I'd used them on school trips and seen their blue and cream vehicles in Yeovil, along with the red and cream 'Safeway' services of South Petherton and the Southern National buses that took us around town. Most rural towns had a similar pattern [cont.]

...some small private operators and a bigger, regional outfit. There were thousands of these small companies, and I was vaguely aware that they were often based in villages. But how do you research them? The company has gone, there's no archive, so far as I know. [continues]

So who knows? The enthusiast community, of course. And they know *everything* about the company and its operation (and they take lots of pictures):

https://www.flickr.com/groups/1524665@N20/

[cont.]

And they write histories: http://countrybus.com/wakes.htm 

But how much do we need? And how do historians writing about the places theses companies served (rather than, say, the vehicles they operated) process that? And how do we do that without being condescending or plain wrong?

A humble bus timetable can tell you masses about a rural economy.

Did buses serve a village every day? Or particular days? What makes those days important? Which places did they go to? When and how did these change? [continues]

From Queen Camel, you could get to Yeovil, Castle Cary and Shepton Mallet every day, but Sherborne, Glastonbury, Street and Wincanton only on their respective market days - this pattern had ceased, but the route core daily route is the same today.

So these small enterprises preserve economic hierarchies an social connections in their histories in a way that other, more conventional sources often obscure.