Hants&Dorset traded continuously for 63 years, 52 of them with liveries of green and cream. For its latest ‘what might have been’ exercise, The MHD Partnership offers its suggestion of how that identity could be brought back to life
IDENTITY PARADE
Hants&Dorset Motor Services lasted from 27 July 1920 until 1 April 1983, when it disappeared in the National Bus Company’s reorganisation of its southern region subsidiaries.
Except that the story is longer than that. It began life nearly 102 years ago on 17 March 1916, as Bournemouth&District Motor Services, and changed its name four years later when expansion into Southampton rendered the original title inaccurate and unambitious.
And although NBC dropped the name in 1983, the privatised Wilts&Dorset revived it as the legal owner of Damory Coaches, the Dorset independent it acquired in 1993, keeping it active until all Go-Ahead operations in this corner of England were placed on a single Go South Coast operator licence.
For much of its existence, Hants&Dorset’s buses were green and cream. A dark shade originally, then the lighter corporate hue of parent company Tilling&British Automobile Traction, later Tilling on its own.
From 1964 i…
