WHAT was the bus company that served Harperley, our haunted outpost on the banks of the Wear, near Crook? Last week, we suggested that it might have been Bishop Auckland’s well-remembered Bond Bros.
“Bond Bros only ran from High Bondgate in Bishop to Low Willington,” says Alan Scott, of Crook. “I can’t remember them ever going to Harperley.”
Alan remembers that Bond Bros – formed by J Bond just after the First World War but carried on by his six sons until 1997 – were joined on the Willington route by buses run by Elite and Frank Wilson.
Bond’s livery was a Manchester City light blue. Elite were deep red, and Wilson’s was red and cream.
Alan worked as a garagehand for Franky Wilson at Hunwick. He started aged 15 in 1946, and left unhappily four years later.
“I was sacked when I was on holiday,” he says. “One of the buses had broken down because it hadn’t been greased, and I got the blame, even though I was in Blackpool! Bus companies were a law unto themselves in those days.”
But if United ran from High Bondgate to Tow Law, which bus company would have dropped day-trippers off at Harperley in the 1950s?
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