Our town’s trams and trolleybuses
Now diesel vehicles have been exposed as hazardous to health, there is a renewed interest in electric-powered vehicles – especially for public transport.
Maidstone might well have been a pioneer of electric transport in the country, with the first proposals to introduce trams being put forward in 1881. The scheme was for a comprehensive network serving all parts of the borough. It met stiff opposition from many quarters and faltered.
So the County Town was beaten to the prize by Dover, which in 1899 established a comprehensive tram system, whose benefits became immediately obvious.
The trams were able to carry many passengers cheaply and efficiently, they boosted housing development in the suburbs, which suddenly became far more accessible, and at night they were a marvel of illumination.
When most houses were still lit only by candles or gaslamps, the bright electric lights of the trams shone out as a beacon of modernisation.
Maidstone Corporation soon changed its mind. In 1899, it sought tenders to build an electricity generating station, which opened on December 19, 1901, in Fairmeadow. In 1902, an application was submitted to the Light Railway Commissioners for permission to open a tram network in the town.
The first tramway opened for business on July 14, 1904.
The two-mile track from the Queen’s Monument in Maidstone High Street to Barming cost £20,000, which included six tram-cars and a car-shed and all the necessary electric cables and fittings.
It was an immediate success, with residents soon clamouring for it to be extended.
In 1907, work began on two more tracks, one running along Knightrider Street, Upper Stone Street and Loose Road to terminate at the Kings Arms at Loose (top of Old Loose Hill).
The other ran via College Road, King Edward Road and Tovil Road to a terminus at the foot of Tovil Hill.
Curiously, although the Tovil route enjoyed moments of popularity, especially when Sir Garrard Tyrwhitt Drake opened his zoological gardens at Tovil Court in 1914, it was never so well patronised as the other two.
A tourist guide from 1914 urged visitors to the town to take the tram out to Loose to enjoying the “bracing air”, and then walk down through the Loose Valley to “the hamlet of Tovil” where they could visit the zoo and then rejoin the tram back to town. Special return fares were available at 3d each (less than 2p).
Maidstone Trams and Trolleybuses by Robert J Harley, is published by Heathfield Publishing, ISBN 9781854144089, price £19.95.