IN THE spotlight this week is a perhaps forgotten but once extremely popular bus and coach company in Worcester.

Memory Lane has previously featured Marks's and Burnham's "buses", but today it's the turn of the transport operations of the late James ("Jim") Knight, who ran a small fleet of coaches, buses and hire-cars through the 1920s and 30s.

His depot was in Padmore Street, from where he operated seaside trips, mystery tours, pub and works outings and a whole host of other travels by hire.

Jim Knight laid claim to being Worcester's first bus operator to introduce a vehicle with inflated tyres, rather than the bumpy-ride, solid rubber variety of the early years of public transport.

His advertisements of the time sought to attract passengers with the slogan "Ride with Us and Ride on Air!"

Jim also started up the first daily bus service to and from the Austin car factory at Longbridge, Birmingham, and ran this successfully for several years until the Midland Red intervened.

Jim's son Roy explains: "Somehow the Midland Red gained a legal grip on the rights to pick up passengers along particular routes, one of them being between Worcester and Birmingham.

"And so intense was it in its competition that the Midland Red often sent out two buses each day at the same time as my father's service to Longbridge. Regularly, there would be one Midland Red bus in front of him and one behind to make sure he did not pick any passengers along the way.

"This happened so often that my father came to nickname his service the 'Middle 'Un!'".

In comparison, local competition with Marks's and Burnham's was more friendly. "If they got stuck, they would help one another out," recalls Roy Knight. "If one operator had booked too many trips on a particular day, he would refer the clients to one of the others - but certainly not to the Midland Red!"

Jim Knight maintained a small fleet of up to half-a-dozen 14 and 20-seater buses and coaches during his years of operation, but was eventually driven out of business in the late 1930s by Midland Red's relentless competition and preferential rights.

Fortunately, Jim had always had two strings to his business bow. He also ran a long-established family hardware store.

This was originally set up in late Victorian times by Jim's father, James Knight, who had his shop in Clap Gate, a historic little thoroughfare which used to lead off the Cornmarket and was near St Martin's Gate.

James senior and his family lived above the shop and continued to reside "over the store" when he moved his hardware business in the early years of the 20th Century to Lowesmoor into a property which stood on what is now the site of the Courts furniture store.

His shop sold a whole range of household items, from rugs to nails and hinges - indeed, everything anyone could need for the home.

James' wife, Eliza, was one of the first people to join the Salvation Army when it established a base in Worcester, with the Citadel immediately opposite the Knight family shop in Lowesmoor.

Eliza's daughters Lily and Elsie and son Jim also joined the Salvation Army. Jim eventually became Deputy Bandmaster for many years.

Salvation Army Bandmaster Alf Hooper and Jim Knight were always to be "close buddies", particularly having been chums in the Army during the First World War.

In fact, they were also once comrades "in crime". Such was the strict moral regime of the "Sally Ann" in those days that even going to the cinema or to a football match was much frowned upon.

Imagine the red faces, therefore, when one day the two men found themselves not far from each other watching a football match, each having gone there surreptitiously!

Jim joined his father and mother in the Lowesmoor shop after leaving school, but was called up for active service in the Great War. He suffered serious machine gun wounds to his hip on the battlefield, leaving him something of a cripple for the rest of his life. His leg had to be shortened by surgery.

During the war, Jim's sister Elsie often watched from an upstairs' window of the Lowesmoor shop as soldiers were marched along the street outside from Shrub Hill Station, presumably on their way to Norton Barracks.

On de-mob, Jim Knight returned to the family business and took over from his father when his parents retired to a house close to The Chequers pub, in Astwood Road.

Like his father before him, Jim went out by horse and cart making deliveries in the countryside and villages around Worcester. Paraffin was particularly in demand in the rural areas where lighting was by oil. However, Jim moved into the motor age when he bought his first lorry for his countryside deliveries. He then branched out into his second business, the bus and coach operations, with a depot just a stone's throw from the Lowesmoor shop, at Padmore Street.

By then he had married and his wife Ethel was a great support to him, helping to run the hardware shop. The family eventually moved out from "over the store" and set up home near Gheluvelt Park.

Unfortunately, at the start of the 1940s, not long after being forced out of the bus operations, Jim also had to close down the Lowesmoor shop, bowing out reluctantly from a family business which had been part of the Worcester commercial scene for about half-a-century. The Government at that time would no longer allow Jim petrol to run his delivery lorry and drafted him into munitions.

He began at Archdales and finished the war years at H.W Ward's. Afterwards, he went into retirement, sadly developed cancer and died in 1951 at the age of 53.

I've learned all about Jim from his son Roy Knight, who lives in Farm Close, Worcester. Roy's wife Olive has also contributed valuable information gleaned from her frequent chats with Roy's mother and aunts.

After leaving St Peter's School, Roy Knight was an apprentice at Archdales. He was called up into the RAF in 1945 and remained in the Services as a radio operator until 1948, being based first in Britain and then in Germany.

When he left the RAF, Roy rejoined Archdales for 32 years service as a machine tool engineer with the company. After Archdales closed, he moved to Metal Box for 10 years, finishing his working life with three years at Metal Castings as the tool and development engineer.