The real-life James Herriot – Alf Wight (1916-1995) – was a veterinary surgeon who practised at Thirsk from 1940
to 1980. Thirsk is really located nearer to the North York Moors than to the Yorkshire Dales, and indeed when the first film
of James Herriot’s books was made in 1974, it was shot in and near Malton. This film was All Creatures Great
and Small, starring Simon Ward as James Herriot.
However, when a second film was made in 1975, much of it was shot in Swaledale – this was It Shouldn’t
Happen to a Vet, starring John Alderton as James Herriot – and when the B. B. C. made the Herriot books into a
television series in 1977, Swaledale and Arkengarthdale again featured prominently; Christopher Timothy now played James
Herriot, and continued in this role until the television series, All Creatures Great and Small, finally ground
to a halt at the end of the 1980s.
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Actor Christopher Timothy on Leyburn Market Place in the late 1980s,
with the ex-United Bristol L5G which was used in later episodes of the
television series. Photograph: Bob Robson
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When research for The Bus Up the Dale first began in 2005, several Swaledale residents – including some
who had been connected with Percival’s – suggested that there must be at least one former Percival’s bus in
preservation because it had appeared in All Creatures Great and Small, which of course had been made some
years after the firm closed down. This was an intriguing lead.
With two different thirty-year-old films and a long-running television series all popularly known by the same name, it was
also not an immediately simple lead to follow up.
It transpires, though, that this was an entirely understandable case of mistaken identity. One of the buses used in the
filming carries bodywork by the same coachbuilders who built a body for a new Percival’s coach in 1936 (a Thornycroft,
registration VN 8391), and the colours also resemble the once-familiar Percival’s
livery of scarlet, maroon and cream.
So, alas, it seems there are no Percival’s buses left after all (but if you happen to have one at the back of your
shed, please do get in touch!).
Still, it may be argued, the buses used in the filming do count as Swaledale buses because so much of the filming was done
in Swaledale. The village of Darrowby was James Herriot’s invention, presumably based upon the real-life Thirsk he had
known in the 1940s. The bus company “Darrowby and District” was dreamed up by the production team on the first
film, All Creatures Great and Small. The assistant director on this film was Michael Dryhurst whose name will
be familiar to readers of bus-related publications.
At least half a dozen different buses and coaches had walk-on (drive-on?) parts in successive screen renditions of the James
Herriot books. So far as we can remember, James Herriot made little specific reference to buses in his stories (why should
he?) although, in Chapter 2 of the first novel, the newly-qualified young vet certainly does travel to Darrowby on a bus
– and this is the journey depicted using Geoff Lumb’s 20-seater, in both the first motion picture and the first
B. B. C. television series. In later adaptations the company name “Darrowby and District” fell out of use.
We can hardly complain of a lack of “continuity” on the part of the television people here: after all, there is no
reason to suppose that the fictitious town of Darrowby was only served by one bus operator (Reeth of course had two until
mid-1938), and it is far from unrealistic to suppose that “Darrowby and District” could have closed down, or sold
out to a rival firm, or whatever, as time went on. In one of his later novels, Vet in a Spin, James Herriot
does remark that the bus which brings him home from the War is the same one which brought him to Darrowby in the first place,
but it would have taken quite an obsessive-compulsive properties buyer to think of this and then track down the same
vintage bus after an interval of several years.
The not unlaborious task of watching every minute of both films and each episode of the television series, spotting buses,
and then frantically trying to descry their registration numbers or other identifying features, has very nearly been
completed at the time of writing (June 2010), there remain 20 minutes of one episode which suffered from a weak signal when
repeated not long ago. Then comes the job of tracing each bus once it has been identified. However, for those who like to
peruse a fleet list, we adduce this provisional catalogue:-
Darrowby and District, and successors (in roughly chronological order)
JC 5313, 1938 Guy Wolf, Waveney B20F ex Llandudno Urban District Council
OU 9286, 1931 Dennis 30cwt, Short B18F ex King Alfred (Winchester)
LYB 941, 1949 Bedford OB, Duple C29F apparently ex Tor, Street (Somerset)
RHN 548, 1952 Austin K8, Plaxton C14F ex Scott’s Greys (Darlington)
KJH 492, 1948 Bedford OB, Duple C27F apparently ex a Convent School in Hertfordshire
LHN 823, 1949 Bristol L5G, Eastern Coach Works B35R ex United Automobile Services (Darlington)
STOP PRESS - thanks to the generous assistance of Margaret Fissenden, we have now officially viewed the second of the two original films, which had hitherto proved somewhat elusive to say the least. Geoff Lumb’s Guy Wolf, JC 5313, appears in this movie at Reeth and at Oakworth Station, and thus earns the distinction of being used in both of the motion pictures and the B. B. C. television series as well. Mrs Fissenden kindly brought a treasured old VHS cassette all the way from Oxfordshire and was good enough to leave it for our perusal here “on the ground” in Swaledale. Grateful thanks to her, and to Tracy Little and Helen Bainbridge at the Swaledale Museum, for making this possible.
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