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The Departure Of Empress Coaches

March 1, 2019
by the gentle author

Empress Coaches who drove East Enders on beanos for generations have departed their historic garages at Corbridge Crescent next to the canal in Hackney after ninety years and now operate from Silvertown. Meanwhile, after a lengthy planning battle, the old garages have been levelled and the Georgian bow-fronted cottages facing the canal will be reduced to mere facades. Below you can read my account of a visit to Empress Coaches before the redevelopment.

Peter Stanton

One of the corners of the East End that intrigues me most is at the boundary of Bethnal Green and Hackney, where a narrow path bordered by crumbling old brick walls leads up from the Hackney Rd to the junction of Mare St and the Regent’s canal. Cutting through at an angle to the grid of streets, it has the air of a field track that was there before the roads and the railway. Looming overhead against the skyline is a tall ruinous structure with the square proportions of a medieval castle, London’s last unreconstructed bomb site, left to decay since an incendiary hit in World War II. Beyond this, you pass under the glistening railway arches to arrive at the canal where, to your left, a vista opens up with majestic gasometers reaching up the sky and a quaint old building with bay-fronted windows entirely overgrown with ivy, cowering beneath. This was the headquarters of Empress Coaches.

Here I received a generous welcome from Peter Stanton, third generation of the Stanton family at the coach yard and still operating from the extravagantly derelict premises purchased by his grandfather.

Edward Thomas Stanton was an enterprising bus driver who bought his bus in 1923 and created a fleet operating from a yard in Shrubland Rd, London Fields, whence he initiated several familiar bus routes – including the No 8 pictured above on the office wall – journeys that became part of the perception of the city for generations of Londoners. In 1927, he bought the property here in Corbridge Crescent but when the buses were nationalised  in 1933, he made £35,000 from the sale of the fleet, permitting him to retire and hand over to his son Edward George Stanton, changing the business from buses to coaches at the same time. “It was a bloody fortune then!” declared Peter, his grandson still presiding with jocularity over the vestiges of this empire today. Outside the fleet of coaches in their immaculate cream paintwork, adorned with understated traditional signwriting sat dignified and perfect as swans amidst the oily filth of the garage, ready to glide out over the cobbles and onto the East End streets.“A coach yard within two miles of the City of London, it will never happen again,” declared Peter in wonder at the arcane beauty of his inheritance.

“My father came here at sixteen with his sister Ivy who did all the accounts,” he explained, sitting proudly among framed black and white photographs that trace the evolving design of coaches through the last century. At first, the bodies of the vehicles were removed in the winter to convert to flat trucks out of season and these early examples resemble extended horsedrawn coaches but, as the century wore on, heroically streamlined vehicles took over. And the story of Empress Coaches itself became interwoven with the history of the twentieth century when they were requisitioned during World War II to drive personnel around airfields in Norfolk, while the staff that remained in London took refuge in the repair pit in the coach yard as a bomb shelter during the blitz.

“My father didn’t encourage me to come into the business,” admitted Peter, who joined in 1960, “But after being brought up around coaches and coming up here every Saturday morning with your dad, it gets into your blood and I could think of nothing else but going into it. I started off at the bottom, I was crawling under the coaches greasing them up. I was a mechanic for twenty-two years but then me and my brother Trevor bought out the company from the rest of the family, and the two of us took it over.”

“In those days, people didn’t go on holidays, they had a day out to the sea on a coach. And they had what they called “beanos,” pub and work excursions going to Margate or Southend and stopping at a pub on the way back and arriving back around midnight. Those pubs used to lose their local trade because people didn’t want to go into a bar filled with a lot of drunken East Enders. They were very rowdy and the girls were as bad as the boys.” revealed Peter, able to take amusement now at this safe distance and pulling a face to indicate that there is little he has not seen on the buses. Put it like this, I used to say that when you took a coachload of girls out on a beano and their boyfriends and husbands came to pick them up at one o’clock – if they knew what I knew these girls had been up to they wouldn’t be so welcoming. In other words, they were not so innocent in those days as people thought they were. But the police were the worst, they went bloody barmy and they did things they would nick anybody else for doing!”

“When I first started there were six beanos every Saturday in the Summer but in the whole of the last year we only did two.” he admitted with a private twinge of disappointment. As the beanos decreased in the sixties, Empress Coaches were called upon by the military for troop movements. “We used to do the Trooping of the Colour, we drove the troops from Caterham Barracks with a police escort. It was the time of the IRA and they had to check all the bins along the way and have a guy with a jammer sitting in the front of the bus, so if there was a remote-controlled bomb it wouldn’t go off. They told us, ‘Whatever you do, drive on. Even if you hit someone.’ There’d be twenty of our coaches full of soldiers plus an escort.”

These were the twilight years at Empress Coaches at Corbridge Crescent, after the family sold the business and were simply employed to keep it ticking over, which explains why little maintenance was undertaken. Yet the textures of more than ninety years of use recalled the presence of all those who passed through and imbued the place with a rare charmed atmosphere. I was not the first to recognise the appeal of its patina, as I discovered when Peter reeled off the list of film crews that had been there, most notably “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy” who wallpapered his office with the gold wallpaper you see in the top picture. “We’ve had Michael Caine here,” he boasted, “Gary Oldman, Ray Winstone and Dennis Waterman too.”

“After I spent fifty-two years of my life here, I’ve got be here.” Peter assured to me, biting into a sandwich and chewing thoughfully,“It’s more than likely this place will be redeveloped before too long and that will be the end of it, but in the meantime – I’m just trying to keep this show on the road!”

Edward Thomas Stanton, the enterprising bus driver who invented the number eight bus route.

Edward George Stanton in his leather bus driver’s coat.

Brothers Peter and Trevor Stanton.

Mark Stanton, Trevor’s son.

Jason Stanton, Peter’s son.

Between the coaches.

A forgotten corner of the yard.

Empress Coaches, the office entrance.

Corbridge Crescent, with the canal to the right

The distinctive red Empress Coaches sign is gone from Corbridge Crescent

These Georgian bow-fronted cottages are all that is left standing now, but soon they will be reduced to facades.

You may also like to read about two nearby industries still going strong

At James Hoyle & Sons, Iron Founderers

At James Ince & Sons, Umbrella Maker

15 Responses leave one →
  1. Jill Wilson permalink
    March 1, 2019

    AAAAAAHHH!!! More ghastly façadism…

    Love the picture with all the reflections – it could be an abstract painting!

  2. Annie permalink
    March 1, 2019

    Sad 🙁 I love this stretch of the canal.
    I’m glad at least the frontage of the Georgian cottages will be kept.
    Does anyone know what’s happening with the gas holders?

  3. stuart goodman permalink
    March 1, 2019

    blimey! this takes me back a bit to the days when i was at central foundation skool, and they used empress luxury coaches to transport us to muswell hill for our weekly bash at getting fit or something.

    fascinating.

  4. March 1, 2019

    I walked that stretch of the Regent’s Canal for the first time in Wednesday’s spring-like weather, and wondered at/about those bow-fronted cottages. I’m sorry that no more than their facades will be preserved, but what’s their story?

  5. Helen Breen permalink
    March 1, 2019

    Greetings from Boston,

    GA, what a great piece. The Stantons’ Empress Coaches certainly “became interwoven with the history of the twentieth century” in London. Those memories of the shenanigans on the coaches during the return trip from the beanos are priceless. For many this excursion was their one day out for the year and they were going to make the most of it.

    Please let us know what eventually replaces the coach property …

  6. Kim permalink
    March 1, 2019

    I think the number 8 route actually originated with the London General Omnibus Company. Presumably Empress ran over it as a ‘pirate’ bus operator in the 1920s to compete with the ‘General’ under buses were effectively nationalised by London Transport in 1933. Will it be ‘Empress of Hastings’ now?

  7. mlaiuppa permalink
    March 1, 2019

    1923.

    It’s a shame they were denied the century mark in their original location.

    Such a waste to destroy all of that history.

    I don’t go anywhere, let alone London to see a “façade.” If I want to see façades, I can go to Universal Studios. Fake doesn’t impress me.

    Developer has become such a nasty word to me.

  8. Eric F. permalink
    March 2, 2019

    I agree with Annie, this is a beautiful part of the canal, and I think it attracts a lot of people. I’ve seen it in films / TV and I’m sure it was the background for the cover for Gary Kemp’s (of Spandau Ballet) autobiography, which would make sense as he was brought up not too far from here. I hope they do the site justice. I’ll certainly be envious of the canal views I assume they’ll have. Sad to see another bit of history go though. At least TGA has done a good job of documenting it.

  9. Gary Arber permalink
    March 2, 2019

    I recognised the Bow Front cottages when they were used in a TV crime serial
    Gary

  10. March 4, 2019

    This is really sad news, I’m guessing the forthcoming London ULEZ has just put the squeeze on operating within London for them.
    I must add that Empress of Hastings are a separate company with no connection, we started in 1929, where Empress in London started up in 1923. I think they must be one of the oldest coach firms in London itself. We would like to pass on our best wishes to all of the staff at the London Empress for whatever they do in the future.

  11. Colin Thomas permalink
    March 13, 2019

    I’m sure their offices were used in an episode of Luther?

  12. Mary permalink
    May 12, 2019

    As regards the gas holders please see this linkhttps://marianplaceconversations.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/Marian-Place-Conversations-Exhibition-Boards-May-2019-1.pdf
    andhttps://marianplaceconversations.com/consultation-stages/.

  13. Trevor barnes permalink
    June 2, 2019

    I would like to let everyone know that Empress coaches does not operate out of Hastings and is now operating from its new premises in Silver Town, East London.

  14. December 3, 2020

    The History Department at Raines Foundation School had a long relationship with Empress Coaches visiting Dover Castle annually. From the 1980’s onwards, a mammoth one day trip to sites on the Western Front around Ypres was a highlight of the year. Always cheerful, resourceful, and first-rate with the pupils, their organisation, reliability and cooperation was second to none. So high was their reputation that schools throughout east London would use them. They were an East End institution and they will be solely missed. Thank you Empress Coaches.

  15. Tom Slater permalink
    June 26, 2021

    I lived in the flat above the Empress office and was a driver for many years.
    I have some great and everlasting memories from all the characters who came and went.

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