KIMES OF FOLKINGHAM

Folkingham is located on the northern edge of the district of South Kesteven with a large market square perhaps out of proportion to the size of the village and its present day population of seven hundred or so. King Edward II granted Folkingham a Thursday market and seven annual fairs. In the days of the stagecoach the impressive red brick Greyhound Inn overlooking the market place from the north was once an important staging post on the London to Lincoln road. The origins of this bus business date back to 1946 when Richard ('Dick') Kime (1912 - 1984) took over the business of A R R King (Alfred King born 1896) of Folkingham - established in the 1920s - with his two Reos. One of King's earliest vehicles was a Crossley with body by Stephensons of Newark, CT4994 of 1922/23. (A man called Arthur King (a son or grandson?) who died in 2009 aged 80 years was also a driver for Kimes). Between the Greyhound on the east and St Andrews Church on the west was 35 Market Place, the base for King and subsequently Kimes. The buses were parked in the street in the market place. In later years purpose built garage premises at nearby 3 Sleaford Road would serve as Kimes base right though to 2013.

The original bus routes were of a market day style operation and were from Folkingham to: Sleaford on Monday and Saturday; Spalding on Tuesday; Boston on Wednesday; Bourne on Thursday; Grantham on Saturday and Sunday. With many RAF stations in the county of Lincolnshire Kimes were active in forces leave services in the 1940s and 1950s. From September 1949 until December 1956 the bus routes from Folkingham were extended to serve Folkingham Camp - this is assumed to be at the former RAF Folkingham to the south west of the village, which was not used by the military at the time, but may well have been used for other accommodation purposes. (Example timetables from the period can be seen here). Some reductions took place in 1956 with the withdrawal of the Tuesday route to Spalding and the loss of the Saturday service to Sleaford and the Sunday service to Grantham. Fleet sizes in both 1949 and 1964 numbered only three. Richard's son John became involved full time in the business in 1970 when a substantial development of operations took place with the bus service of Camplins of Donington (running as Holme Delight) taken over, along with their busy daily route from Boston to Spalding via Donington on which Camplin had operated two AEC Regent double-deckers. Camplin continued as a coach operator until 1977 when taken over by Elsey of Gosberton. Considerable enhancement of the services towards Grantham took place when the Aslackby - Billingborough - Folkingham - Grantham service 26 of Lincolnshire Road Car was withdrawn and its operation passed to Kimes in April 1972. A new vehicle was purchased for this work, WCT901K a Bedford YRQ coach with Duple Viceroy 45-seater body. Kimes had offered to operate the daily route without the benefit of a county council subsidy. In 1974 the route was revised at the country end from Folkingham - Aslackby - Pointon - Billingborough to Folkingham - Billingborough - Pointon - Rippingale - Aslackby. This gave passengers from the large village of Billingborough a quicker journey to Grantham as well as serving Rippingale for the first time. Although subsidy had not been sought in 1972 for the 26 service in 1974 subsidy was sought for the original Saturday route to Grantham via Pickworth, Sapperton and Braceby. During the 1970s operations moved to a new garage built in Sleaford Road on the site of a former farmhouse. Further routes came as Road Car retrenched during the seventies, including Osbournby - Swarby - Culverthorpe - Welby - Grantham in January 1977, also Amber Hill to Boston. By this time there were three routes operating on Saturdays from Folkingham to Grantham, the original route via Pickworth; the ex-Road Car 26 route via Humby and the other ex-Road Car route via Swarby and Welby.
Kimes Coaches (as they were then called) ran a substantial portfolio of extended holiday tours in both Great Britain and on the continent in the 1980s. A service between Billingborough and Sleaford each weekday was introduced in 1981, again replacing Road Car; this was route 34 which Road Car had operated jointly with Delaine. Deregulation of bus services in 1986 offered opportunities which brought the bus operations to Oakham and Upingham in Rutland and saw new longer routes introduced between Boston and Peterborough (Friday and Saturday) and Boston to Lincoln (Friday). The ex-Road Car route from Boston to Kirton was also added to the route portfolio in 1986. The Kimes fleet size in 1988 was twenty seven vehicles, nine of which were double-deckers, and in the mid-1990s was twenty, again with nine of them double-deckers. In later years the focus has been on bus operation rather than coaching, but this is not untypical of several Lincolnshire operators, eg Delaine of Bourne and Brylaine of Boston. A service from Grantham to Stamford via Corby Glen was introduced from January 2004 when Road Car withdrew from the route (this still operates and is now Call Connect service 4). Kimes later gained operation of the Sleaford to Grantham via Ancaster route too as their service 27.		Alan Watkins remembers that in the late 1950s and early 1960s the Road Car base at Billingborough was home to three crews and two vehicles. A double decker and a saloon, the latter a woefully underpowered 4-cyl LWL. There was a dormy shed here but the double decker had to stand outside. The decker worked a duplicate from 8 a.m. Billingborough-Sleaford on Service 34 and then worked various ex-Sleaford journeys until it worked back on the 4.15 p.m. Sleaford to Billingborough. The saloon spent it's time trundling around 20 miles from Billingborough to Grantham on Service 26, a rural ramble. Grantham worked the Service 26 on Sunday.
Livery was originally green and cream but in modern days had become predominantly cream all over. Expansion had taken Kimes away from their traditional focus of operations in Lincolnshire to routes in Rutland such as Oakham to Peterborough and Stamford to Uppingham. Many of the buses were lettered for specific routes and / or carried a map of the operating area (see pictures below). They also bore the legend "an employee owned company", whilst the modern electronic indicators displayed "with Kimes" underneath the destination place name. For many years this was to be a typical family owned operation passing from father to son until significant change came in January 1997 when the family business was sold and transformed into a worker's co-operative with eighteen member shareholders, with Paul Brown becoming the manager. At that time John ('JK') Kime (son of the founder Richard) wished to pursue his other business activities although he maintained a financial interest in the bus company. Initially Paul Brown, engineer Richard Searson and driver John Messenger were elected as directors by ballot. Sadly John died a month later and his place on the board was taken by David Odlin.

The co-operative formed in 1997 continued as the modus operandi (although perhaps with insufficient reinvestment by its members) until July 2011 and the sudden death of Paul Brown the operations manager after which Kimes Buses was sold to Centrebus. The Kimes routes formed a useful extension to the Grantham-based network operated since 2005 by Centrebus (as successor to Mass Transit). However articles in the trade press in June 2013 gave expression to doubt over the continuation of the Kimes base in Folkingham. Routes nearer to Grantham and Sleaford (eg 26 Aslackby - Folkingham - Grantham, 27 Sleaford - Ancaster - Grantham and 4 Grantham - Corby Glen - Stamford) would be integrated further into the Centrebus Grantham operation whilst the more operationally distant routes involving not inconsiderable dead mileage at the start and the end of the day (eg 9 Peterborough - Oakham, 12 Stamford - Uppingham and 58 / 59 Boston - Kirton / Donington - Spalding) would relocate their base of operations. Subsequently the 58 and 59 passed to Brylaine of Boston (with five ex-Dublin Bus Olympians and some of the staff) and the Folkingham site closed at the end of August 2013; route 9 passed to the Melton Mowbray (Saxby) depot of Centrebus and the 12 to the Corby operation of Centrebus.