Fresh calls have been made to reinstate a Harrogate bus service which was scrapped more than three years ago.

The 104 service between Wedderburn Road and Harrogate town centre was removed in November 2018, despite efforts from residents and councillors to save the service.

Locals say the scrapping of the service has left elderly and disabled residents cut adrift and forced to pay for taxis to get into town.

However, with North Yorkshire County Council bidding for a £116 million to help fund bus services, there have been renewed calls to reinstate the service.

Removal was a ‘slap in the face’

Lynne Hallums lives on Stonefall Drive, which the bus used to serve as part of its circular of the Wedderburn Estate.

She has chronic nerve pain, fibromyalgia and has to wear a hearing aid. Lynne used to take the 104 into town around four times a week.

She said the bus used to serve a large elderly community, all of which knew each other. It was also a means of getting to Mowbray Square medical centre and the hospital.

But now she says the removal of the service has left them without regular transport and cut them off as a community.

Lynne said:

“When they said they were going to take it [the bus] away, it was like a slap in the face.”

After the removal of the 104 bus, a voluntary service known as “dial-a-ride” was put on to serve the estate. 

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However, Lynne says that the voluntary service needed to be booked in advance and did not help those who wanted to go into town regularly.

Meanwhile, elderly and disabled residents are forced to either walk to Wetherby Road or Knaresborough Road to catch a bus.

Lynne bought her house on Stonefall Drive 12 years ago and said the bus stop outside her house was a key selling point.

However, she says she is now considering moving after two years of covid lockdowns and the lack of a regular service to get into town and meet people has had an affect on her mental health.

“I need to get out of this house, my mental health is suffering.

“We do not get to see anyone. We cannot support the local businesses.”

Renewed calls to reinstate

The subsidy for the 104 service was withdrawn in May 2014 when North Yorkshire county councillors agreed that town services should no longer be subsidised.

The decision was made in an effort to save the council £1.1 million and Connexions, which operated the service, subsequently stopped running the bus in 2018.

Craig Temple, director of the company, said the removal of the subsidy was the starting point which led to the service being stopped.

He said:

“I did not want to take it off. The people were lovely and it is not something that we wanted to do.

“We looked at other ways of reintroducing it. I would love to put it back on, the people were great customers and it breaks my heart.”

He added that the loss of subsidy, drop in passenger numbers due to covid and the lack of small buses in its fleet to be able to serve Wedderburn meant it was unlikely that the company would be able to reintroduce the service.

However, residents, local councillors and Andrew Jones, Conservative Harrogate and Knaresborough MP, have called for it to be reinstated.

Ahead of the county council bidding for funding for improved bus services, Mr Jones said he hoped a Wedderburn service would be included in its proposal as the removal of the service had “cut off a whole section of our community from the hospital, the medical centre at Mowbray Square and the town centre”.

Cllr Chris Aldred (left) and Andrew Jones MP.

Cllr Chris Aldred, the Liberal Democrat councillor who represents the Fairfax ward on Harrogate Borough Council, to the Stray Ferret that while the removal of the service may make sense commercially, he was “not convinced” it served residents well.

He added that he had raised the idea of reinstating the service as part of the county council’s bus improvement strategy, which it has bid to government for £116 million of funding for.

Cllr Aldred said:

“Despite this strategy, I cannot see it returning. There does not seem to be anything in that strategy for local services.”

£116m bus strategy

The council’s plan asks for £116 million of government cash over the next eight years to fund support for existing and new services, a simpler ticketing system, better information on journeys and other measures.

The aim is for services to cover the whole of North Yorkshire and has been dubbed an “enormous challenge” by Cllr Don Mackenzie, Conservative executive county councillor for highways.

It is hoped these targets will be also met through so-called enhanced partnerships where councils agree to infrastructure improvements in return for better services from bus companies.

The Stray Ferret asked the county council whether any restating of the 104 service to Wedderburn was included in its plan and, if it wasn’t, what measures does the authority intend to implement to help elderly residents with public transport.

Michael Leah, assistant director for travel, environment and countryside service at the county council, said:

“Our Bus Service Improvement Plan does not include details of individual bus services or journeys yet instead outlines how we aim to expand services and support those which already exist. We continue to provide a discretionary £1.5 million budget to subsidise local bus services which provide fixed route and timetabled bus services that are not discretely commercially viable.

“In partnership with our operators, we aim to increase passenger numbers and therefore, through increasing commercial viability in this way, seek to extend the bus network as well as increase frequency of services.

“Through the plan, and based on funding received, we are committed to delivering more flexible, on-demand services following the successful YorBus pilot in Bedale, Ripon and Masham. YorBus is fully accessible, with low floor access and a ramp access for users of wheelchairs, pushchairs and those with mobility difficulties.

“We have just concluded the public consultation on proposals in our enhanced partnership plan. A report incorporating the feedback will go to our executive in March to consider the enhanced partnership with bus operators, with a view to that partnership coming into effect from April 1, 2022.”

This History is written for The Stray Ferret by Harrogate historian, Malcolm Neesam:

The recent tragic circumstances which have initiated a somewhat frenzied public examination into the background of individuals who past generations with vastly different values to our own times decided to honour, have prompted me to consider how this might apply to Harrogate.

This, initially, may seem of dubious value, given that Harrogate’s great days of urbanisation and statue erection belonged to the west’s post-slavery decades of the mid and later nineteenth century. The great problem is one of degree. If Harrogate has never put up any statues to acknowledged slave owners, this is not to deny that in common with every other UK community, there will inevitably have been those of its citizens who benefited from the slave trade by indirect association. The innkeeper, who invested in a company known to profit from the Virginia tobacco trade; the doctor, who bought shares in a company trading in Jamaican sugar; the gentleman farmer who sat on the board of a cotton importation business without looking too closely into the conditions of those who produced that cotton.  Were we today to closely examine the basis on which some of our family fortunes were established, many would surely be discomforted.

Alexander Wedderburn, 1st Earl of Rosslyn

But perhaps there is one figure with a strong connection with Harrogate who might be scrutinised, and that is the man who gives his name to Wedderburn House, Wedderburn Road, and the Wedderburn estate in general. Alexander Wedderburn, M.P. (1733-1805) was an ambitious politician, who in 1771 became Solicitor General, later advancing to the positions of Attorney General, Chief Justice of Common Pleas, and, in 1793, Lord Chancellor, a post he held until 1801.

Wedderburn earned a place in history when he grilled Benjamin Franklin on his role during the unrest in the American colonies. His meteoric career earned him many enemies, and his friendship with David Garrick and Richard Brindsley Sheridan was evidence for his great interest and support for the theatre. Wedderburn’s titles included those of Baron Loughborough and first Earl of Rosslyn.

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In 1775, Wedderburn acquired lands south of what became the Stray, and after living at Woodlands House, he moved into Wedderburn House, it being widely believed to have been remodelled for him by the great Carr of York. Wedderburn’s decision to acquire a residence in Harrogate was partly because he travelled frequently between London and Edinburgh, and found the town ideally situated more or less half way between the two. It was also known that he was attracted to one of the actresses who appeared with Samuel Butler’s troop at Harrogate’s Church Square Theatre – now Mansfield House. In 1790, the sixteen year old Tryphosa Jane Wallis was described as “exquisitely fair, with expressive blue eyes, well controlled movements, a fine figure, and a voice of more sweetness than strength’ . Her talent was recognised by the Lord Chancellor of England, Alexander Wedderburn, also known as Lord Rosslyn, and his wife, who obtained relief from a medical complaint from the mineral waters of the neighbouring St. John’s Well. Years later, when Miss Wallis was a nationally celebrated actress, she interrupted her work at Covent Garden to visit Harrogate,  staying at Wedderburn House, although it is not known what Lady Loughborough thought about the visit!.

Wedderburn House on The Stray

Wedderburn’s wife, Charlotte, received such benefit from the waters of the St. John’s Well on Wetherby Road, that her husband, who then had the title of Baron Loughborough, paid for the rebuilding of the pump room, which is shown in the engraving of 1796, (main picture)  and which records Charlotte’s visit to the well. This was tenanted by William Westmorland, whose name may be seen above the door. Lady Loughborough’s retinue included a black page boy, who is depicted at far left.

Although this writer knows of no direct involvement by Alexander Wedderburn with the slave trade, it would be unrealistic to think that so powerful a man as the Lord Chancellor with his broad portfolio of business interests, did not occasionally benefit from the proceeds of this vile business.

Further research into this may prove revealing, if anyone has the wish to do it.

Malcolm Neesam:

Malcolm Neesam was born in Harrogate and graduated from the University of Leeds as a professional archivist and librarian. He subsequently worked in Hereford, Leeds, London and York where, for twenty-five years, he was North Yorkshire’s County Music and Audiovisual Librarian.  Malcolm is a much-published author. In 1996 Harrogate Borough Council awarded Malcolm the Freedom of the Borough for his services as the town’s historian.