47 Buses

The 47 is a very old route and has been linking Catford with the city as far as I can trace back. However, it used to push on beyond Catford to Bromley and Farnborough via what is now the 208 and 358, and taking around 90 minutes. The frequency from Shoreditch to Bromley was every 6 minutes, exactly matching the 208, but bettering the current 10 minute service on the 47. Alternate buses continued to Farnborough.

There have been a few minor changes in between. Apart from the introduction of one-way systems at Shoreditch and Catford — and the subsequent introduction of a contraflow bus lane at Catford and abandonment of the Shoreditch one — there has been a diversion in the Surrey Quays area, first to serve the new shopping centre, and later to serve a new station at Canada Water nearby when the Jubilee Line opened. But the most significant one is the diversion of buses away from Deptford High Street to Deptford Church Street. The latter is now the main route through Deptford, having been upgraded to dual carriageway, but the former is where all the shops are. It is also where the market is, which is where the problem lay.

Deptford Market trades Wednesdays and Saturdays, and when it does run, the southern end of the High Street is closed to traffic (it is restricted access at other times also). Thus, for some years, buses ran via the High Street on Sundays, Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesday evenings, Thursdays and Fridays and via Deptford Church Street at other times. Additionally buses sometimes ran via the full length of either street, but sometimes cutting across via Giffin Street. When travelling home from school in the early 1990s, not having studied the timetable, I never quite knew whether to go to the High Street or Church Street, and it seems neither did the drivers, because buses could appear up either. In 1994 this unsatisfactory arrangement was wisely dropped with the routeing now standardised via Deptford Church Street.

As mentioned, the route used to originate from Farnborough. Introduction of route 199 in 1958 saw the 47 cut back to Bromley garage on Mondays to Saturdays, but the status quo was restored in 1964. The 4 September 1982 scheme saw trunk routes in the Bromley area revised, with route 94 withdrawn in favour of new routes 208 and 261. The latter also replaced the 47 between Bromley Common and Farnborough (and the 229 between Farnborough and Orpington).

The 47 was further curtailed to the rather silly terminus of Downham in 27 April 1985, which was a device to allow the southern part of the route, now numbered 47A and running from Bromley Common to Surrey Docks, to lose its conductors, having already lost its Routemasters the previous year. The 47A interestingly had a Sunday extension to Aldgate via Tower Bridge, to serve market traffic. However, the 47A lasted just five months on Mondays to Saturdays, being replaced by a re-incarnated 199, which ran via Greenwich and continued to Trafalgar Square via route 1. The rather useless section of the 47 between Downham and Catford garage was withdrawn without replacement in November 1988.