The story of CC 9305 and the search for the Glenton 121 Group

This is CC 9305, and its story is bound up with the history of public transport and the leisure industry from the 1930s, but it is also intimately linked to our family.

CC 9305, 2025

I came across its existence by pure chance earlier in the week and tracked it down to Dover Transport Museum where it has resided for 40 years.*

The chairman of the museum told me that it “is a 1929 Dennis GL fitted with a "toastrack" body by J. Roberts for Llandudno Urban District Council who used it for tours of the Great Orme until 1953 and was acquired in the 1960s by Glenton Tours of Peckham Rye and still carries the Glenton Livery”.

And in those two sentences we cover the early years of motor manufacture, the emergence of coaching holidays and two companies which are part of that history.

CC 9305 was made by Dennis Brothers Limited which my Wikipedia tells me “was an English manufacturer of commercial vehicles based in Guildford. It is best remembered as a manufacturer of buses, fire engines and lorries (trucks) and municipal vehicles such as dustcarts. All vehicles were made to order to the customer's requirements and more strongly built than mass production equivalents. Dennis Brothers was Guildford's main employer.”.**

Happy chara travellers, undated

And as you do I followed this up with a visit to Grace's Guide To British Industrial History which chronicles in great detail the emergence of the firm from one which began in 1885 making bicycles and progressed through motor cycles to a variety of vehicles which whizzed across our roads during the twentieth century.***

So, to CC 9305 made in 1929 and customised as a touring vehicle for a local authority doing the business until 1953. It was just a motorised char a banc replacing the older horse drawn version.

In the collection I have pictures of both which often feature groups of day trippers out for a “jolly” into the countryside or on one of those beery excursions to the seaside via as many pubs as could be found.  

Horse drawn chara, undated

We called the latter "beanos" and were often a workplace adventure, although I guess any organizations went in for the day trip out taking in beauty sights, churches or the houses of the great and the good.

And that brings us to dad whose career was in the leisure industry ferrying happy and maybe not so happy holiday makers across the country and beyond onto the Continent.

Like Toad of Toad Hall, he was fascinated by motor cars and having forsworn a place at grammar school was working with buses and coaches by 1922 and always described himself on official forms as either a “Motor engineer” or “Motor mechanic”.

And some time in the 1930s he left the North East for London securing a position as a driver for Glenton Tours and quickly became one of the two drivers taking Glenton coaches across Europe, to France, the Low Countries, and on to Switzerland, Austria and Germany.

Only the war interrupted the holidays, but with the return of peace dad and Glenton Tours were back on the road.

Travelling with Glenton's, 1963

The firm was never backward at promoting themselves and they regularly advertised in the quality newspapers, often with a lightness which suggested a company who mixed seriousness with the silly.  So, in 1963 the Observer carried an advert announcing “Snobs & Char-a-bancs are out of date.  Dowagers and flower sellers equally enjoy Glenton Coach Cruises.  Knowledgeably planned routes, first class hotels and superb char-a-bancs (sorry coaches).***

Dad and Glenton travellers, Gindleward, Switzerland, undated

I don’t know if these ads worked but mother always liked them and was impressed with the anonymous copy writer.

And some time around “Snobs & Char-a-bancs” Glenton’s acquired CC 9305, gave it the company livery and used it to promote the firm.

That work will have been done in their garage in Nunhead and given that dad worked in the paint shop in the winter months he may well have been involved with its makeover.

Back almost where we started in Dover with CC 9305

All of which makes CC 9305 special and rekindled long forgotten stories from dad about the Glenton’s Char-a-banc.

He retired in 1986, and sometime after the firm closed down, just when I have yet to find out, but there is a clue which comes from the archive of the Dover Transport Museum in the form of a letter dated 1996.

In that letter a Ms Kenny comments on the purchase of one of the coaches and refers to “Glenton 121 Group”.

So far, I have only found a few references to the group and pretty much all are a record of them participating in vintage vehicle rallies.

But someone will know, and with that I will get a bit closer to the story of Glenton Tours and where they fit in the history of the luxury coach trade.

And a long the way I may find out a bit more of CC 9305, whose story goes dark between 1953 and its acquistion by Glenton's.  I am hoping that the archives of the Dover Transport Museum my reveal details of the lost years, and here I have to thank the museum for their help in revealing its history,  allowing me to reproduce a picture of the vehicle and their promise to trawl their records for more information.

Which in turn will contribute to Glenton’s story.*****

Doing the biz of having fun, undated

Well, we shall see.

Location; with Glenton Tours and Dover Transport Museum which is open from 1030 to 1630 every Wednesday, Sunday and Bank Holiday during the summer and autumn of 2025

Pictures; Glenton Tours memorabilia from the Simpson collection, CC 9305, courtesy of Dover Transport Museum, the horsedrawn char a banc, undated, from the Lloyd Collection and happy holidaymakes, undated courtesy of Ron Stubley

*Dover Transport Museum, https://www.dovertransportmuseum.org.uk/

**Dennis Brothers, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dennis_Brothers

***Grace's Guide To British Industrial History, https://www.gracesguide.co.uk/Dennis_Brothers

****The Observer, April 21st, 1963

***** Glenton Tours, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/search/label/Glenton%20Tours

At Burndon Park in the September of 1937 with the Wanderers 4 goals up.

I have been rediscovering the photographs of Humphrey Spender.

During 1937-38 he recorded the lives of working people in Bolton as part of the mass observation project.

It is something I wrote about recently when I featured BOLTON WORKTOWN, Photography and Archives from the Mass Observation*

I first came across Humphrey Spender in 1982 when someone bought me a book of his pictures.**

It is a book I never tired of looking at and it was one that I thought I had lost.  Well perhaps put away safely, so safe that I had no idea where.

This loss was not helped by colleagues at Bolton Library and Museum Service who said it was difficult now to obtain a copy.  An observation confirmed by a glance at Amazon where it was being offered  at anything between £30 and £60.  All of which made me even more gloomy given that mine was a first edition.

All however is now sunny because after an evening of hunting it turned up on a bookshelf.

And I have decided I shall feature another of the pictures from their online collection.

It is one I like.

According to the caption it was taken on September 25th 1937 when Bolton Wanderers reserves took on Wolverhampton reserves at Burndon Park in Bolton, and Bolton won 4-0.

I would like to know at what moment Mr Spender took the picture. Perhaps at the point that the home team were cruising to their final goal, and the smiles of the spectators say it all especially that of the man who has turned his back and shares the happiness of the moment.

Picture, courtesy of Bolton Library and Museum Service, who hold the copyright for this image, 1993.83.08.07

BOLTON WORKTOWN, Photography and Archives from the Mass Observation*, http://boltonworktown.co.uk/

***Worktown People, Photographs from Northern England, 1937-38, Humphrey Spender, Falling Wall Press

Snaps of Chorlton, from Neale Road off towards the Meadows 1963-64

An occasional series featuring private and personal photographs of Chorlton.

It was taken in the winter of 1963-4 from the back upstairs window of Ida Bradshaw’s house on Neale Road.

Today the view would be obscured by the flats of Lawn Green, but back then it was all that was left of the farm yard, workshops and land of the farm which had fronted the parish graveyard for two hundred years.

To the right in the background is the Bowling Green Hotel, to the left the houses which face Brookburn Road. And away in the distance are the meadows. What is perhaps remarkable are the buildings on the horizon just left of centre.

These I think were the homes of the sewage workers and stood just to the left of the little footbridge across Chorlton Brook. It is still possible to make out a break in the hedge where the garage of the properties was situated. There are those in Chorlton who remember living in one of them.

Location; Chorlton, Manchester

Picture; from the back upstairs window on Neale Road 1963, from the collection of Ida Bradshaw

One Roman poet …… a heap of poems and ...... a story

 Today I am renewing my friendship with Catullus.

2016

To be more accurate I am reading the biography of my favourite Roman poet.

I first came across him in 1966 along with the 16th century poet John Donne and they have stayed with me ever since.

Both appealed to a sixteen-year-old with their mix of funny, irreverent and love poetry, and anyone who has fallen in love, only to lose that love will remember just how bitterly intense the feelings are when you are a teenager.

1966 edition

All of which brings me back to Poem 8 with its angry response to an ended affair

“Break off 

                    Fallen Catallus

     time to cut losses,

bright days shone once

               you followed a girl

               here and there

............................................

now a woman is unwilling

Follow suit

a clean break

hard against the past”*

So that’s it.

Catullus’ Bedspread: The Life of Rome’s Most Erotic Poet, Daisy Dunn, 2016

"A biography of Gaius Valerius Catullus, Rome’s first great poet, a dandy who fell in love with another man’s wife and made it known to the world through his verse.

2004 edition

This superb book gives a rare portrait of life during one of the most critical moments in world history through the eyes of one of Rome’s greatest writers.

Living through the debauchery, decadence and spectacle of the crumbling Roman Republic, Catullus remains famous for the sharp, immediate poetry with which he skewered Rome’s sparring titans – Pompey, Crassus and his father’s friend, Julius Caesar. But it was for his erotic, scandalous but often tender love elegies that he became best known, inspired above all by his own lasting affair with a married woman whom he immortalised in his verse as ‘Lesbia’. A monumental figure for poets from Ovid and Virgil onwards, his journey across youth and experience, from Verona to Rome, Bithynia to Lake Garda, is traced in Daisy Dunn’s brilliant portrait of life during one of the most critical moments in world history”.**

Pictures; cover Catullus’ Bedspread: The Life of Rome’s Most Erotic Poet, 2016, cover of The Poems of Catullus, Translated by Peter Whigham Penguin Classics, cover shows a portrait of Arteidorus from Hawara, Egypt, second century, British Museum 1974, reprint, and Catullus The Poems Translated by Peter Whigham Penguin Classics, 2004, cover shows a detail from a Roman mosiac 3rd-4th century AD in the Piazza Armenia villa of Maximinorous. Sicily, photoo AKGO/Eric Lessing

*Poem Eight, The Poems of Catullus Penguin Books, 1966

** Catullus’ Bedspread: The Life of Rome’s Most Erotic Poet, Daisy Dunn, 2016

Mr. Topping paints Eltham Palace …..

 Now, I maintain, and I maintain most strongly that you can never have enough paintings of Eltham Palace.

Growing up in Well Hall with the Pleasaunce and the Tudor Barn, that magnificent medieval Palace was always a counter attraction.

True in the 1960s you could only gain access on a Thursday but that was enough and as a kid with a vivid imagination my day would be spent with a host of kings, and barons down to the cooks and servants who waited on. 

Even then I was well aware that had I been in the Palace in the Middle Ages I wouldn’t be giving the orders, instead it would be my task to fetch, obey and generally be the dogsbody.

And then our Jill moved into a house nearby with views up to the Palace and as the book says, “my cup runneth over”.*

All of which made the Palace a perfect topic for a Topping painting and like New York I just had to repeat it.

Location; Eltham Palace

Painting;2024 © Peter Topping Paintings, from Pictures from an photograph by Liz and Colin Fitzpatrick 2015.

When a chunk of your history takes an unexpected turn ….. Glenton Tours

I have lived with the story of Glenton Tours for 75 years.*

Luggage label, undated

It was a coach company, offering tours of Britain and the Continent from the 1920s and was at the luxury end of the market.

They began when an estate agent in south east London settled a debt by accepting two coaches and entering the touring business.

Dad & Elizabeth, undated

It was the right thing to do at the right moment, as the growing middle class with money to spend sought holidays which combined a bit of culture, with a lot of sightseeing.

 Added to which Glenton’s promised to do the lot, and the lot included the itinerary, the hotels and meals with drivers and couriers who were pleasant, knowledgeable and always attentive.

In the age before cheap air travel and decades before the internet this was the way to see Britain and a host of European countries. 

Tours lasted between seven, twelve and fifteen days, with plenty to take in and free time built into the journey.

Brochure, 1951

And our dad drove their coaches across the UK and on to France, the Low Countries as far as Switzerland and Northern Italy.

He joined the firm sometime in the early 1930s and continued working for them until he retired in 1986.

Very early on in his career he was chosen as one of the two drivers to take coaches into Europe, and apart from a break during the last war, dad did the business and was highly thought of by the firm, his colleagues and the passengers.

And we grew up with that job, which from spring through to autumn would see him leave one morning to return seven, twelve or fifteen days later.

My treat when younger was to be picked up by him at the end of a tour and after the passengers had been dropped off Dad and I would go up to the garage in Nunhead where the coach would be serviced before starting all over again in the morning.

Now, while we had accumulated a lot of memorabilia from Dad what was missing was the detailed story of the firm itself.

And despite years of research, I had drawn almost a blank, until someone who worked with him got in touch. The message was simple enough with “I ran Glenton Tours until 1985. I am happy to supply information” and the promising news that “the archives are held in the Dover Transport Museum”.**

Dad,ready for the off, undated

So the next chapter is about to open up.

And like all such new twists, the story will offer up much about Glenton's along with how some of us spent our holidays during the last century, and maybe even something about our Dad.

We shall see.

And just before the story went live the museum got back to me with a picture of a vehicle Glenton's acquired in the 1960s. 

It is CC 9305 which Mr. Flood of the museum tells me "is a 1929 Dennis GL fitted with a 'toastrack' body by J.Roberts for Llandudno Urban District Council who used it for tours of the Great Orme until 1953. CC9305 was acquired in the 1960s by Glenton Tours of Peckham Rye and still carries the Glenton Livery".

Now l remember Dad talking about it and given that in the winter he worked in the paintshop of the garage he may well have worked on it.

CC 9305 which is a 1929 Dennis GL, bought by Glenton's in 1960

All of which adds to the excitement of the new chapter.

Pictures; Glenton Tours memorabilia from the Simpson collection, and the Glenton's coach, courtesy of Dover Transport Museum

* Glenton Tours, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/search/label/Glenton%20Tours

**Dover Transport Museum, https://www.dovertransportmuseum.org.uk/

Reading the newspaper in Bolton in 1938

It is odd to think that in some ways the world I grew up in is far closer to that of my parents than the one I have shared with my children.

My parents and I belong to the wireless generation, remember ice on the inside of windows in the winter and accepted that public transport was the way you got around.

Now I could go on but there is always that danger that it becomes a bout of nostalgic tosh or becomes a political statement of the passage from a collectivist society to one where the overwhelming measure of success is wealth and fame.

So instead I shall reflect on these  pictures of the Reading Room from the Work Town collection.*

And before anyone accuses me of being either a tad reactionary or just dead old I am the first to enjoy visiting our local library. It is bright, light and unlike that blanket of serious silence you used to endure it is a place where children are encouraged to enjoy books, act out the stories they have read and want to come back to.

It’s also where the traditional book of reference sits beside a bank of computers offering a link to the world.

Now back in 1937 the Bolton Public Library did offer that all encompassing experience it is just not one that most people would feel comfortable in today.

It is all very spartan which may be because this was temporary reading room while the new one was being built in the Civic Centre.

This new library along with a museum and art gallery opened in 1939 and was designed by local architects, Bradshaw Gass & Hope.

But I remember something similar in our own Public Libray in New Cross in the 1950s.  The rows of newspapers and the big wooden tables and above all that powerful smell of disinfectant which I am convinced was also sprayed on the books.

It had a slightly sweet smell and so permeated the books that it still lingers on the odd copy sixty years after mother borrowed and forgot to return them. To open these volumes of the Deptford Public Library is to be transported back.

It is a feeling reinforced by the sharp lighting and above all by the fact that no one seems to take their hat or coat off.  They have wandered into a place which seems to be saying “by all means come in, do what you have to do but by golly don’t get comfortable.”

And under those stern notices to refrain from smoking and above all to be silent you can hear the pages turn and that resounding noise as a book is dropped onto a table or a chair is scraped across the wooden floor.

It is not a library that my children would recognise but it is familiar enough to me and no doubt to my parents.

Pictures; courtesy of Bolton Library Museum Services, 1993.83.19.22, 1993.83.12.21 & 1993.83.12.20

*The pictures are from Work Town which were part of a Mass observation “project founded in the late 1930s by a group of young writers and intellectuals, led by Tom Harrisson. They believed that British society was deeply divided, with very little understanding or consideration given to the lives and opinions of ordinary people.

The first focused study carried out by Mass Observation began in 1937 in Bolton, which they called Worktown.

Bolton was chosen as a ‘typical’ northern working class town, and Harrisson recruited a team of men and women who tried to capture a vast range of information about the local population using observation techniques."

They remain a wonderful and powerful record of life in the industrial north during the late 1930s and can be seen online at http://boltonworktown.co.uk/