When Stroud's buses were green (and even red)
1983-1993
The Stroud Valleys Years
For the ten years between 1983 and 1993, Stroud’s buses operated under its own unique brand, with what ostensibly was its own bus company, Stroud Valleys.
The decision to rebrand Stroud’s operations came at the point when the Cheltenham & Gloucester Omnibus Company split from the Bristol Omnibus Company. The new undertaking had inherited four very different markets and depots in Stroud, Swindon, Cheltenham & Gloucester. Recognising this, management’s decision — reinforced at privatisation by the management buyout of 1986 — was to brand separately.
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| Post privatisation livery styles. On the right is the standard single deck design; the right it the revision applied to the Leyland National '3' |
Gloucester was very much a workaday sub-regional centre with extensive new developments and a local government focus. Cheltenham had developed into a bijou and elegant leisure & discerning upmarket shopping destination. Swindon’s ‘new town’ prosperity emerged from its high tech industry and massive overspill accommodation.
And Stroud?
Stroud was fast becoming an area of two halves, rural & urban. Residents of the now increasingly gentrified Cotswold villages were more likely to use their 4x4s than the bus. A residual population in the semi-urban valley settlements still relied on bus services. Young people from all parts increasingly felt that Cheltenham was the destination of choice, often using the bus to do so.
Stroud’s chosen livery was fittingly retained as green, whereas Gloucester went blue and Cheltenham & Swindon, red. The impression created at Stroud as elsewhere was of a locally owned, managed and operated bus company. And it worked. Head office gave direction but as many decisions as possible fell to the discretion of local people.
The optimism and enthusiasm thus generated was emphasised even further upon the management buy out of 1986. Thereafter, Stroud’s buses began to appear in what at the time was a rather fashionable stripy livery. The brash mustard flash against the conservative background of darker green spoke of progressiveness, modernity, forward thinking within the context of a conservative rural area. Directors admitted that it owed much to Badgerline’s design, then appearing to Stroud’s south. But there was no harm in that.
The livery, identity, branding and the local pride it engendered lasted till 1993, when Stagecoach bought the parent company. Thereafter, repaints were progressively in Stagecoach’s original ‘white n stripes’ livery though till 2003 Stagecoach retained the name as ‘Stagecoach Stroud Valleys’.
The last green bus rolled out for the final time in July 1996, ending a quarter of a century of green bus operation in the town, since the National arrived in 1919. It is interesting that the former Ebley Bus operation now known from December 2007 as Cotswold Green has recently revived this once ubiquitous colour.