June 2026

In June 2026, the Trust’s Royal Blue long distance coach run recreated the service through Southern National territory from Barnstaple into Ilfracombe passing the bus station and depot in Ropery Road. The route then took some 15 preserved coaches up through Ilfracombe High Street leaving for Combe Martin and on to Exmoor, recreating the bygone scene.

Behind the High Street frontage, the company sketched out plans to fit out the enquiry and booking office for those self-same long distance coach services as well as day tours to the interesting sights and beauty spots through North Devon and north Somerset.

While imagining the interior today would be computer aided with the ability to ‘walk’ through the interior looking from every angle, moving the furniture or changing the colour scheme with a few clicks of a mouse – terminology as meaningless to designers then, as feet and inches are to designers today.
Within the archive, this artist’s impression painted on sugar paper and carefully preserved in the Calton Phoenix Collection, not only conjures up the scene for customers with the design motifs, and colourful posters, but gives insight to the way things were done in the middle of the 20th century.

This example is illustrative of a number of such interior and exterior designs now held in the Trust’s archive of treasured documents.

Ref. CPC