Lancashire United (Blazefield) garage at Clitheroe – 31 May 2001 (467-22)

Thursday 31 May 2001 (approx. 0800) – These are NOT Stagecoach buses!!

Ribble Motor Services expanded into Clitheroe in September 1926 when it acquired the business of Pendle Motor Services. This garage property was then established to house the vehicles serving this part of East Lancashire. In addition to a substantial brick building the site also included a workshop building and a small office/admin unit.

The site was behind terraced houses lining Pimlico Road accessed by a street between numbers 17 and 19 Pimlico Road opposite the Waggon & Horses public house. The lighter coloured properties are numbers 17 and 15 Pimlico Road which may still be seen today. The garage and the ancillary buildings were subsequently demolished and the site is now occupied by houses of Spring Meadow.

Ribble was acquired by Stagecoach Holdings in May 1989 and the infamous Stagecoach stripes livery replaced what had gone before. In April 2001 Stagecoach sold the former Ribble garages at Clitheroe, Blackburn and Bolton to the Blazefield group which named their new operation Lancashire United (this had no connection with the large bus company that had once served South Lancashire). At the same time the Ribble garage at Burnley was acquired by Blazefield becoming part of Burnley & Pendle.

Less than a couple of months after the Blazefield acquisition I visited Clitheroe and photographed the property and, of course, the buses. The buses still wore Stagecoach livery but now had Lancashire United fleetnames applied. About 25 buses were allocated to Clitheroe garage and, since it may have been half term week at local schools, there were quite a few buses to be seen – 12 or so.

Seen in the yard area were:

779 (H79 CFV), an Alexander AM bodied Mercedes-Benz 811D new to Burnley & Pendle in April 1991
2058 (LFJ 884W), an Eastern Coachworks bodied Bristol VR new to Western National (1237) in March 1971
427 (K27 WBV), an East Lancs EL2000 bodied Volvo B10M-50 new to Burnley & Pendle in April 1993