YOU were quite right when you said the No 8 bus was often full when it reached New Marston (Memory Lane, May 11).

When the Northway and Headley estates were built and the bus routes were extended, we never stood a chance of getting on.

As you said, the bus ran along Marston Road through the city centre to New Hinksey.

We queued at the stop at the bottom of William Street, near the Somerset House pub, and at peak times the buses would just sail past and we would have to wait for the next one, or even the one after that.

If the bus company was short of drivers or vehicles, it always seemed to be the No 8 route which was reduced. It was very frustrating being a passenger at New Marston.

JOHN BROOKS
Oxford

YOUR front page about William Morris setting up Morris Motors in Oxford (Memory Lane, May 11) brought back memories.

William lived at 16 James Street, East Oxford, and my dad lived next door when he was young. In later years my dad, who was born in 1902 and was 10 years younger than William, worked at Morris’s when more money was needed to pay off the mortgage.

His house cost £800 in the early 1930s.

I was born in 1934 and we had no hot water and baths in a tin tub.

The article on Oxford buses in the same issue was also interesting. I remember the No 8 went from Marston to Hinksey, the No 3 from Rose Hill to Kingston Road and the No 4 from Westbury Crescent to Wolvercote.

And what a lovely picture of Gloucester Green.

It was a lovely bus station, pretty clean if I remember.

I wish we still had that now – it is such a job to be dropped off at the buses now.

Then there was a picture of the Oxford speedway team from 1937.

I went to speedway usually on my own when I was a teenager – I knitted my yellow and blue scarf and still have it somewhere.

My dad also took me dog racing.

BARBARA CLEARY
Witney