CHRIS HEAPS, who retired in July after three years as chairman of the London Bus Museum, revisits its history and provides an insider’s authoritative survey of its achievements since moving to a permanent new home at Brooklands seven years ago
The London Bus Museum owes its existence to the foresight of a group of enthusiasts who got together in 1966 to consider how their shared desire to preserve some old London buses might be addressed.
They formed the London Bus Preservation Group, which a few years later purchased a former ‘temporary’ wartime hangar in Redhill Road, Cobham, used originally by Vickers as an outstation and which, I believe, may have played some part in the development of Barnes Wallis’s bouncing bombs.
Although old and damp, it provided a home where the enthusiasts’ vehicles could be restored and maintained, but was only rarely open to visitors. By the end of the 20th century, it was clear that such conditions were unsuitable, if not fatal, for the preservation of fragile vehicles.
By now the group had been transformed into a registered charity, the London Bus Preservation Trust, and the trustees ultimately – but not without difficulty and delay in the Green Belt – obtained planning …
