Binbrook, because of its distance from the railway lines, has for a century been a North Lincolnshire transport centre of importance. Four separate firms operating carriers' carts businesses were centred at Binbrook at the beginning of the century.

Alphabetically, these were William Dobbs, Jacklin, Edward Marfleet and Christopher Stark. With Binbrook as the centre-point of a wide ranging service, these carriers set out regularly for Grimsby, Louth, Market Rasen and Caistor.

In the 1920s the carriers' carts were knocked out gradually by the motor buses, some of which were owned locally. But Binbrook Parish Council was later to claim, speaking for a centre which had been served so strikingly well by the carriers, that deterioration in the service had resulted from the coming of the buses.

This was only partly because the needs of the local shopper were of less concern to the buses than they had been to the carriers in the matter of timing. There was also the fact that so much actual shopping at places like Grimsby and Rasen was entrusted by each housewife to this or that carrier.

Binbrook's position on the main bus route between Marken Rasen and Grimsby seems assured even if there are complains on the subject of bus times. It is worth noting, too, as an aside, that the old tradition here of having special buses for special occasions continues as an accepted fact of local life purely because Binbrook still remains today as a village which has so many buses of its own.

Mr Frank Stark has been running a special shopping bus from Binbrook R.A.F. station to Louth for some time. Possession of what has been virtually a fleet of village buses has made it very easy to arrange for transport arrangements fitting in with any occasion as required.

In connection with transport, the village enjoys a favoured position almost comparable with that which it had with the old carriers' carts.

In the provision of school buses to Lindsey County Council Binbrook probably takes precedence of any town in the county outside Lincoln and Scunthorpe. Mr Marfleet alone has 11 coaches engaged on work for the Education Authority in addition to operating six of the County Council's own buses.

Ignoring services which he provides for some of the primary schools on the Wolds, Mr Marfleet supplies school buses for Market Rasen De Aston and Secondarly Modern, Waltham Toll Bar, Caistor Grammar School, Louth Grammar School, Louth High Holme School, Binbrook and Ravendale.

No real competition has taken place in the past between Marfleet and Stark buses owning to the fact that their services have been channelled in different directions. Concentration of two very old established firms in a single control is expected nevertheless to provide a strengthening influence.

Both firms spoke highly of the other when they were seen by a Mail reporter this week. Both Mr Frank Stark and Mr Stanley Marfleet dwelt upon what is for both of them a keenly remembered link with the past.

Mr Marfleet said: "My father, Mr Bert Marfleet, was the first of the old carriers to operate a motor service from Binbrook, using an old type 14-seater Model T Ford. This was way back in 1919."

Mr Stark humorously recalled the wide ranging commissions with which old carriers were entrusted, "My grandfather even went so far," he said, "as to buy corsets for the Binbrook ladies. And there didn't seem to have been any complaints about them not fitting properly. The old carriers had a way with them."