Robert Barr was born on the 12th December 1889 on a farmstead near Edinburgh, Scotland, and while he was still young his parents moved to Woolley Moor Farm located between Wakefield and Barnsley and his education was carried out at Woolley School.
When he was aged 14 he persuaded his father to allow him to move to Leeds where he obtained work as a 5/- (25p) a week apprentice motor engineer with the Bridge Garage Company based under the Dark Arches at Neville Street.
Robert spent his next ten years in Leeds living at Beeston Hill, an industrial environment of back-to-back houses. He frequently sought escape from here by walking or cycling in the countryside and it was here that he formed the ambition to enable people to get away from the town and into the great outdoors. To further his plans he spent three years as a manager of a coach firm and in his spare time he carried out repairs to bicycles and cars.
By 1913 he had managed to save £400 and set himself up in business as R Parr and bought his first motor coach which he used Monday to Friday to transport goods but at the weekend he began to put his dream into practice by transforming the vehicle into a char-a-banc to carry customers to the coast and country. That same year, 1913, Robert then aged 25, married Edith Midgeley, who he would have seven children with.
Despite the disruption caused by the First World War, by 1921 he was carrying passengers as far as Scotland, Devon, and the South Coast; and by 1925 he was running regular trips to Blackpool, Morecambe, and Scarborough.
In 1926 on the eve of the General Strike Robert bought out a company for £800. The business had been founded in 1912 by two partners Wallace Cunningham and Arnold Crowe and called Wallace Arnold which became a very successful touring Company. Wallace Cunningham stayed on until his death in 1950 while Robert developed his road haulage business under the name of Robert Barr (Leeds) Limited. From 1930 Wallace Arnold ran daily coach services to Blackpool and even started European Tours to Germany, but such coach travel was very expensive and somewhat exclusive until it opened up after the Second World War.
The Company had in turn purchased various other coaching interests and had depots mainly in Yorkshire, London, and Torquay. By 1937 the combined companies had 120 vehicles and in this year they also founded the Barr and Wallace Arnold Trust Limited, this was formed to acquire the group’s interests and had Robert Barr as its President. During World War Two the group played a vital role while Robert was appointed the Chief of the Auxiliary Fire Service (AFS) in Leeds. 1945 saw the end of the war and the Group purchased two hotels on the South Coast.
Wallace Arnold Tours were strategically placed throughout the Yorkshire catchment area with vehicles engaged on extended tours at both home and on the continent and while Scarborough was a busy excursion centre the main criteria for the Royston depot lay in the maintenance of a mill service carrying workers to the mills of South and West Yorkshire.
The Company transferred perhaps a score of vehicles to their London Park Lane, Croydon, office to work on excursions and extended tours including the continent just as the Yorkshire office did.
New premises on Chadwick Street, Hunslet were opened and the maintenance of the fleet was carried out by another subsidiary company Wallace Arnold (Sales & Service) Limited with Stuart Barr as the Director and assisted by the Chief Engineer Mr C Hesketh. These new premises were designed primarily as show rooms for Morris, Wolseley, MG, and Morris-Commercial vehicles. Above the showrooms were offices where vehicle sales accounts were kept and also the maintenance records of the coaches. Behind the frontage of the Sales & Service was the maintenance area of three large workshops one containing 12 well-lit pits one which can accommodate 90 coaches with washing and fuelling capabilities and finally there was a body shop operated by Wilkes & Meade a coach building business acquired in 1942. Fleet work on the coaches was fitted in around work done on cars and commercial vehicles brought in by customers of the Sales & Service Limited.
At this point we have more to say about Robert Barr. In 1926 and 1927 he was nominated as the Conservative candidate and stood for the North-East Ward but he failed to get elected and in 1936 he stood unsuccessfully for the Woodhouse Ward. He was finally elected to the Council in 1944 to fill a vacancy in the Harehills Ward, which he served for only one year. Robert Barr’s recreations were walking, golf, fishing, gardening, and farming. It was his passion for gardening that saw him appointed Chairman of the Leeds Paxton Society and Chairman of the Leeds Flowers Competition. His love of music saw him become President of the Leeds Girls Choir as well as supporting the Leeds Amateur Operatic Society.
In addition to all this he was Chairman of the Yorkshire Section of the Institute of Transport, a Director of the Leeds Cricket, Football and Athletic Company and a very keen supporter of both the Leeds Triennial Music Festival and the Leeds Children’s Holiday Camp Association. His private residence was Shadwell House and by the time of his death on 18 July 1961 in St James Hospital his company had become one of the most respected in the city.
Post war, although the Trust was primarily engaged in tour and excursion traffic three small companies within the group were stage carriage operators. These were Hardwick’s Services, acquired in 1951, Farsley Omnibus Company Limited, who joined the fold about the same time and Kippax & District Motor Company Limited, purchased in 1956. The Trust purchased Evan Evans tour business in the 1970s. By the time that coach services were deregulated in the Transport Act 1980 Wallace Arnold were operating 290 coaches from its headquarters in Gelderd Road, Wortley. Following deregulation Wallace Arnold was a founding member of the British Coachways consortium that competed with the state-owned National Express, it left after a year and briefly ran its own London to Torbay service.
In 1997 Wallace Arnold sold out to a multi-national private equity and venture capital Company 3i. This was followed in 2005 with Wallace Arnold merging with Shearings in a £2 million deal to become WAShearings which claimed 14% of the UK holiday coach market. In 2007 the Wallace Arnold name was dropped and the Company name being simplified to Shearings Holidays. The merger included eight travel shops in Yorkshire.
The drop in trade can be said to have started in the 1970s when flying overseas for holidays became more of the norm but the final nail in the coffin was the Covid Outbreak which stopped much travel.
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As a young boy in the 1960s my grandmother often took me on these Wallace Arnold day trips