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So, as we speculated back in November, London Transport is finally bringing back the roundel on its buses. Time, then, to consider an even more iconic logo.

The once famous Bristol scroll is 100 years old, this year. There’s even going to be a book about it, ready for Christmas. I bet you can guess who the author will be. If you can’t, click here. So esoteric is the title that it sees a 10 per cent discount on Amazon already, four months ahead of release.

The scroll appeared on the radiators of many a Bristol Commercial Vehicles buses (also trucks), before things went all modern with the introduction of a sans serif block no doubt befitting the BLMC era.

But a golden scroll also adorned the sides of the Bristol Omnibus Company’s vehicles, between 1965 and the introduction of the National Bus Company corporate image in 1972. Coupled with the creamier “OMO livery”, was this one of England’s most balanced & enduring local bus identities?

Beyond 1972, I recall the scroll continued on the Bristol Joint Services fleet on Bristol city services. It seems the city council’s influencing control was enough to preserve the last trace of an honourable past. This vanished in 1978, once the company took over all responsibility for city services. I have no picture to share with you but the sublime though smaller scroll looked slightly out of place in white not gold; on leaf not Tilling green; alongside or near the manufactured NBC “flying ‘N’” logo.

Modern marketers would no doubt scoff at such an old-fashioned logo as the scroll. Looking back, though, it seems to me that of all the Tilling companies’ methods of presenting themselves, the scroll was the most elegant, refined, balanced and stylish, with just the right hint of sophistication.

Pity, then, that during the bus side ascendancy of the scroll BOC was such a struggling operator. There was that huge Joint Services deficit resulting in ever-escalating fares. This was coupled with a collection of very long distance & costly rural routes hæmorrhaging passengers. No matter the nature of livery & logo, like so many former NBC operators, it was always hard to put a positive spin on something that was basically close to bankrupt.

The scroll nevertheless told you exactly what you needed to know. Bristol. It replaced the more typical block name BRISTOL but even before that, for many years, Bristol Omnibus vehicles simply carried the Bristol city coat of arms, no matter that they operated in Weston-super-Mare or Warminster.

Try Flickr for sundry shots of Bristol REs like this one. Without doubt the best first generation rear engined single deck, with handsome BET front with twin headlamps plus OMO livery & Bristol scroll

And this, perhaps, was the greatest failing of the scroll and the Bristol name. In those days, Bristol was probably remote from the day-to-day lives of people in, say, Cheltenham or Chippenham. At least successor brand Bristol Country Bus and then privatised Badgerline appended a town or city name in white block (e.g. BATH) to its fleet, giving a modicum of local identity.

But the changes seen with Bristol’s hived off northern operation were greatest: a brief blossoming of local colour & identities in the likes of Gloucester and Swindon. All, of course, are now gobbled up by either First or Stagecoach. In this context, perhaps the local identity championed by the “Bristol” name & scroll was no bad thing, after all.

i Leon Daniels on the LT roundel