Memory lane

This photograph was taken in Sussex in the 1920s. It is an evocative snapshot of the modes of transport available to most people at this time. Try comparing this with today’s experience of getting to work!

In the Nineteenth Century, cities and towns attracted many people to better paid and more secure jobs in factories from declining and poverty struck rural areas. This created a new challenge: transporting large numbers of workers to and from work within urban areas or from the country to the town.

At first most workers relied on walking because the first horse bus services were rare and expensive. Passenger numbers increased as cheaper bench seats were attached to the roofs of buses.

As overcrowding in the centre of the towns and cities increased, housing was built on the outskirts where the air was cleaner and life less crowded. The rise of the omnibus can be charted with the spread of the suburbs and the larger numbers of people who had to be transported greater distances.

One development of the original omnibus was the tram running on grooved rails set into the ground. There was less resistance to the wheels than on the uneven roads and trams were more comfortable and could carry more people than buses. Horse power was later replaced by electricity collected from overhead wires.