Tilling Group
Thomas Tilling bus in Cobham Bus Museum, 1997.
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| Founded | 1846 |
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| Headquarters | London |
| Service type | Rural and urban bus services |
Thomas Tilling Ltd, later known with its subsidiary companies as the Tilling Group, was one of two conglomerates which controlled almost all of the major bus operators in the United Kingdom between World Wars I and II and until nationalisation in 1948.
Tilling, together with the other conglomerate, British Electric Traction (BET), became the main constituents of the country's nationalised bus industry in the late 1960s and was sufficiently well-known to have entered popular culture as part of London's Cockney rhyming slang (Thomas Tilling = shilling).
The company continued as an industrial conglomerate after nationalisation of its bus interests; it was acquired by BTR plc in 1983.
The company traces its origins to 1846, when Thomas Tilling started in business. Thomas Tilling was born in 1825 at Gutter's Hedge Farm, Hendon, Middlesex, of parents who had moved there from Gloucestershire. In 1846, at the age of 21, he went into the transport business in London as a in Walworth using a horse and carriage which cost him £30. In January 1850, he purchased a horse bus together with the right to run four journeys a day between Peckham and Oxford Street. This bus he drove himself, and at the time had only one employee; a conductor, Mr. Joseph Eagle, who stayed with the firm until the end of his working life, well into the 1890s. By 1856, he owned 70 horses, which he used for bus and general carriage work. When the Metropolitan Fire Brigade was formed in 1866, Tilling was contracted to train and supply horses to haul the fire engines; the horses were trained to respond quickly and, prior to handover to the fire brigade, were employed on bus services (primarily the Peckham route) to gain experience with heavy traffic. Tilling soon became the biggest supplier of horsepower and vehicles in London, with a stable of 4,000 horses by the time of his death in 1893. Tilling is buried at Nunhead Cemetery.
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