On 27 October 1906, Crosville Motor Company was formed in
Chester by George Crosland Taylor and his French business associate Georges de Ville, with the intention of building motor cars. The company name was a
portmanteau on the names of the founders. In 1911, Crosville commenced its first bus service, an service between Chester and
Ellesmere Port using a
Lacre motorbus. By 1927, Crosville had consolidated an operating area covering the
Wirral Peninsula and parts of
Lancashire,
Cheshire and
Flintshire, operating a fleet of over 250 motorbuses predominantly manufactured by
Leyland Motors. Under the terms of the Railways (Road Transport) Act 1928, allowing for the
Big Four British railway companies to provide bus services, in August 1929, the
London, Midland and Scottish Railway purchased Crosville Motor Services for £398,750 (), equivalent to 27s. 6d. per share of the company. The new LMS (Crosville) company then purchased Holyhead Motors and UNU Motor Services of
Caernarfon over the next few months. Shortly afterwards, the 'Big Four' reached an agreement with the
Tilling Group and
British Automobile Traction (T&BAT) to complete a cross-holding deal, whereby each organisation held a 50% share in a series of jointly-held and consolidated regional bus companies. LMS (Crosville) was therefore merged with T&BAT's Royal Blue of
Llandudno, and renamed Crosville Motor Services on 15 May 1930, after only nine months of outright LMS ownership. In the next few months the company consolidated its majority share of the
North Wales coastal services, buying up various smaller private companies that operated in the Crosville area, including: White Rose Motor Services of
Rhyl, Red Dragon of
Denbigh, Burton of
Tarporley, North Wales Silver Motors and Llangoed Red Motors. On 1 May 1933,
Western Transport of
Wrexham, the
Great Western Railway's northern Welsh road service, was amalgamated with Crosville, making Crosville Motor Services the fourth largest bus operator in the United Kingdom. In 1930, All-British Travels Ltd was formed by coach operators George Taylor of Chester, Alfred Harding of Birkenhead and J.W. Scott of Edinburgh, with sleeping partner Evan R. Davies, a solicitor in Pwllheli. Under the fleet name of 'All-British Line', the initial intention was to run express coach services to and from Liverpool and Llandudno to London via Taylor's Market Square car showroom in Chester, operating a central London travel agency to advertise those services and the other coach services of the respective companies. This express coach service to London commenced on 14 April 1930. Crosville had also started an express coach service between Liverpool and London in 1929, and by 1933, tried with All-British Travels Ltd to co-ordinate the Liverpool to London service, thereby complying with the North Western Traffic Commissioner's decree to reduce the duplication of that service. A joint timetable was worked on, but problems co-ordinating the service proved impossible to surmount. In January 1933, the coach operator, Red & White Services of Chepstow in South Wales, purchased All-British Travels Ltd and in September of that year, the remaining All-British Line express coach service between Liverpool and London operated by Taylor ceased. Taylor continued in the coach excursion business and car trade in Chester up to 1972. Although the start of the
Second World War brought about cuts in the company timetable, by the end of the war, the company had increased passengers by 50% and revenues by 90%. This was through
North Wales being seen as a safe area from
Luftwaffe bombing, resulting in a number of
shadow factories and
munitions factories being built in the area. This resulted in the expansion of a number of formerly quiet villages, and hence the route map changed quite dramatically: for example,
ROF Wrexham,
Marchwiel needed over 200 buses daily. This passenger demand brought about a change in fleet policy, with the relatively small double deck fleet being considerably expanded, mostly with second-hand vehicles as production capacity at most bus manufacturers had been given over meet the requirements of the military. On 3 December 1942, Crosville became a subsidiary of the
Tilling Group. The change of ownership resulted in a change from maroon to 'Tilling Green' livery and
Bristol-chassised buses replacing Leyland as the manufacturer of choice. the coach operators were a sustainable competitive entity. New Bristol double-deckers had become the standard fleet purchase for all Tilling/BET fleets, which allowed the company to serve the post-war boom until 1950, when traffic began to fall again thanks to the increase in the number of private cars. The network continued to decline, except in the provision of a new service to replace railways removed by the
Beeching cuts, the "Cymru Coastliner", introduced on 5 September 1965 between Chester and Caernarfon, anticipating the closure of the
British Rail route and the intermediate stations serving both towns. Crosville was among the BET operators that passed into the ownership of the state-owned
National Bus Company (NBC) on 1 January 1969, following the passage of the
Transport Act 1968. The Act also introduced the principle that rural bus services could be subsidised by councils. Although they had reduced costs by the introduction of
one-person operation, Crosville submitted a list of 196 routes that required financial assistance. With the transfer of
North Western Road Car Company routes operated within
Greater Manchester to the newly-formed
SELNEC Passenger Transport Executive in 1971, the NBC split the residual services of North Western between Trent and Crosville, with the latter taking over 119 vehicles and depots in the Cheshire towns of
Northwich,
Macclesfield and
Biddulph in March 1972. A consolidation of companies within the NBC resulted in Crosville taking over services in parts of West Wales from
Western Welsh, including those from the depots in
New Quay,
Newcastle Emlyn and
Lampeter. The company continued to consolidate and reduce its network through the 1980s, making losses of £1million () in 1980 and £2million () in 1981. Rebranding of local services in metropolitan areas, such as 'South Cheshire' for services Crewe and Nantwich and 'TransPort' for services in Ellesmere Port, assisted in flattening the rate of decline in revenues, but losses continued to mount. On 13 February 1986,
Secretary of State for Transport Nicholas Ridley decided that, because of their size, the four largest NBC companies would be split, as they provided too great a competitive threat to
deregulation. Crosville was split into two, with the English and Welsh operations divided between two businesses.
Crosville Cymru on the "Cymru Coastliner" service in
Porthmadog in July 1989
minibus in
Bangor in July 1989 The Welsh and Oswestry depots were split into a new company, Crosville Cymru Ltd, headquartered at
Llandudno Junction depot and established with a fleet of 470 buses, minibuses and coaches operating from 17 depots and outstations, which was sold by the NBC to a
management buyout team in January 1988. A year later in January 1989, Crosville Cymru was sold to
National Express for £6million (). In October 1990, 120 workers at Crosville Cymru's Wrexham depot affiliated with the
Transport and General Workers' Union (TGWU) walked out on strike following the suspension of the depot's TGWU branch secretary and two shop stewards. A week into the strike, the striking Wrexham workers were dismissed by Crosville Cymru for
breach of contract after a new wage offer by the company was rejected by the TGWU, and by the end of November, the company announced it was taking legal action against the TGWU for 'misleading its members' and had begun the process of closing the depot. Following a major fleet reduction and a loss of services to independent Wrights of Wrexham, the strike ended after four months when Wrexham depot closed on 25 February 1991, with police being called to reports of graffiti sprayed in the depot and bus tyres being punctured. As part of the purchase of National Express by the Drawlane Group in July 1991, Crosville Cymru, alongside Liverpool-based Amberline, were moved by Drawlane into a new
shelf company named Catchdeluxe Limited. After a period of uncertainty in which Crosville Cymru withdrew from National Express coaching work, transferring operations to Amberline and seeing a small number of redundancies, and had its Oswestry depot and an outstation in
Abermule taken over by Drawlane subsidiary
Midland Red North, losing 31 buses in the changeover, Crosville Cymru changed hands to
British Bus following the splitting of the Drawlane Group's bus operations to the new management-owned company in December 1992. In August 1996, British Bus was purchased by the
Cowie Group. A year later in November 1997, Cowie rebranded to
Arriva and adopted a corporate aquamarine and cream livery, with Crosville Cymru rebranding to Arriva Cymru. This operation continued until February 2002, when it merged with
Arriva North West to form
Arriva North West & Wales. It now forms part of
Arriva Buses Wales.
Crosville in England bodied
Bristol VRT at
Stockport bus station Operations in England remained under the original Crosville Motor Services licence, retaining the headquarters in Chester. On 25 March 1988, Crosville was sold to ATL (Western). Some depot reorganisation took place, with
Heswall closing in September 1988 and West Kirby reopening. Expansion in Greater Manchester soon followed when Crosville took over the operations of fellow subsidiary
Yelloway of
Rochdale in November 1988 after it ran into difficulties. ATL (Western) ownership, however, lasted less than a year with Crosville being sold to Salisbury based
Drawlane Group in February 1989. Drawlane already owned the neighbouring
North Western Road Car Company and
Midland Red North companies, after acquiring the
Bee Line Buzz Company in October 1989 from
Stagecoach Holdings and
East Midland Motor Services, they took the opportunity to reorganise Crosville's operations. In November 1989, Drawlane split the majority of Crosville's depots between its sister companies: • Crewe and Etruria depots passed to Midland Red North • Runcorn and Warrington depots passed to North Western Following the closure of West Kirby garage and the transfer of Northwich garage to North Western in January 1990, The Crosville name continued until services were rebranded as
First Chester & The Wirral ten years later. Following losses, First sold the business, along with depots in Chester,
Rock Ferry and Wrexham, to
Stagecoach Merseyside and South Lancashire in December 2012. With six minibuses not required by the new depot owners left for disposal and the Crosville brand sold to Potteries Motor Traction, the rump of the original company was renamed North British Bus Ltd in March 1990, ==Revival==