Carrier carts between Mersea and Colchester
Before regular motor-bus services, carriers took passengers, parcels, mail and goods between Mersea and Colchester. Horse-drawn carts crossed the Strood and served both the eastern and western parts of the island.
The Cudmore mail and carrier carts
Bernard Cudmore's father ran a carrier service and mail cart to Colchester. His carts started from the common ground outside the Victory at West Mersea. Bernard described the business and some of its customers in a conversation with Dennis Chatters recorded in August 1979, lasting about fifteen minutes.
Henry John May’s will, signed on 14 September 1891, explicitly identifies William Rudlin as a West Mersea carrier. May left to his wife Emma any money owed to him by Rudlin. The will was proved in August 1894.
The 1894 trade directory lists three regular carrier services to Colchester. Mrs Cudmore travelled on Mondays, Wednesdays and Saturdays; William Rudlin on Tuesdays, Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays; and Percy Rudlin on Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays and Saturdays. Each service stopped at the Plough in Colchester and returned the same evening.
Early motor-bus competition
Motor buses began competing with the carriers in the early twentieth century. The Great Eastern Railway started its Colchester–West Mersea service in November 1903 and A. W. Berry began running buses on Christmas Eve that year. Berry first used two ten-seat Daimlers. The railway company sold its service to him in March 1905 after problems with the reliability of its own buses. By 1914 Kelly’s Directory recorded Berry’s bus passing through Peldon three times a day on its way to West Mersea.
Bullen introduced a rival service in 1912. The Mersea Bus Company began operating in 1916 and was registered as the Mersea, Colchester & District Transport & Bus Co. Ltd in 1918, using the Primrose name. Its services included routes via Fingringhoe and to East Mersea through Peldon. Another operator, Mr Day, began a service along the main road in 1920, subsequently extending his business towards Fingringhoe. P. H. Underwood acquired Day’s services around 1929 and added journeys serving both East and West Mersea.
The Primrose and Underwood services were sold in 1935, and Thorpe Brothers and Berry’s followed in 1937. Eastern National took over the remaining route network. By 1950, the old competition had been replaced by a single principal bus operator between Colchester and Mersea.
Rudlin's Chevrolet, 1938
G. W. Rudlin operated from City Road. A photograph taken in 1938 shows the firm's first motorised carrier vehicle, a Chevrolet with bodywork by Maskell of Tollesbury. Its driver was Arthur Death, formerly employed at Digby's ironmongers.
The museum photograph of the Chevrolet was donated through the Peter Rudlin collection. Its catalogue identifies both Arthur Death and Maskell of Tollesbury, who built the vehicle’s body, and places the picture outside the Rudlin base in City Road. It documents the transition from horse-drawn carriers to a commercial motor vehicle, rather than the introduction of Mersea’s first motor bus.
The Eastern National bus depot at West Mersea closed in March 1973.
See George Rudlin's business and Jack Saye's bus-driving career. Bernard Cudmore's 1979 carrier-cart interview can be heard online.
G. W. Rudlin’s Chevrolet carrier, museum photographic catalogue (1938)