London's next dead bus 347: Romford to Ockendon Location: outer London/Essex Length of journey: 12 miles, 45 minutes
The 347, which dies this weekend, is London's least frequent bus. It runs at two hourly intervals just four times a day - all journeys done and dusted by 5pm - and is also one of London's least used bus routes. It exists to serve a few quiet lanes on the Essex fringes either side of Upminster and has done since 2004. But TfL have decreed that residents of those far flung lanes can do without a London bus service, all to save a bit of money, so the 347 runs for the very last time tomorrow. Many may mourn its passing but few will miss it.
The death of the 347 has its roots in a 2023 consultation which proposed merging the minor 346 with the unloved 497. The merged route brought three buses an hour to one of the 347's former backwater stretches, making it mostly redundant, but with a Mayoral election imminent TfL couldn't quite bring themselves to pull the plug. A decision to kill off the route was made last August and announced last month, much to the disappointment of the leader of Havering Council. To read his statement click here, to view the consultation click here, to read my summary click here, to watch Geoff's video about a ride on the 347 click here and to take one final virtual ride read on.
The 347 slips out of the back of Romford station on the hour, every two hours, to generally minimal interest. There are quicker ways to get to Harold Wood, and indeed Upminster, and indeed Ockendon station, so you have to be quite dedicated to choose to board this early. It begins at busy bus stop Z along with the Lakeside-bound 370 which will will continue to visit Upminster and Ockendon five times an hour so you'd be better off catching that. The 347's paltry timetable is still posted here although the route no longer appears on the spider map pinned up in the shelter because this was updated and replaced prematurely two weeks ago. The bus stop panel also displays a 'Route 347 will be withdrawn' poster with a map designed by TfL's How Bloody Complicated Can We Make This department. I could drone on for ages about why their awful map didn't need to show seven alternative routes, including not enough of the key ones, but thankfully here comes the bus and I need to get on board.
Our ageing vehicle rattles and whines its way past Romford's shops, picking up nobody. Its windows are filthy which is a shame because we'll be speeding between fields later, but why use a decent vehicle on a doomed and underused route? Our first passenger boards outside the police station, a lady with a metal poppy hanging from her handbag, and a second in a hoodie at the next stop. One has only boarded because we came along first - the 174 or 498 would have done just as well - and the other is heading to a workplace in Upminster that won't have a direct bus service next week. By the time we reach the rusting flyover only one of them remains, and then it's time for the Tesco twiddle.
When the 347 was introduced it was deemed important to serve the Gallows Corner Tesco Extra so the bus has to filter right to leave the A12, meander down to the back of the car park and then negotiate its way back out again. Since then Harold Hill Hospital has been turned into a housing estate allowing the 346 to filter through to the station much quicker, but sending the 347 that way would have involved a pesky consultation so nobody bothered and we have to queue back out onto the A12. Passengerwise it works though. Nobody wanted us at the supermarket but here on the arterial a pensioner with a wheeled chair flags us down and the driver gets to demonstrate that the step-free ramp still works.
Twenty minutes in and we've reached Harold Hill station, a Crossrail interchange, beyond which comes the first set of lanes where the 347 used to be the sole route. Nobody's interested in boarding, however, and the reason for this is soon evident as we catch up with the 346 in front. Since the route was reformulated last year the 346 and 347 now share the next sixteen stops, out past Pages Wood and into Upminster, and us being stuck behind the other route is the perfect exemplification of why the 347 is no longer needed. A couple of passengers board and alight the other bus, including one who successfully flags it down during the remote mile with no bus stops where it's not officially Hail & Ride either. If anyone from TfL's Let's Add New Bus Stops department is reading, residents of Cornsland Close would appreciate an official stop rather than watching 100 buses a day skipping by.
We cross the Southend Arterial and enter the outskirts of Upminster past the new housing estate where the pitch and putt used to be, enjoying some fine views across the Ingrebourne valley towards the heights of Emerson Park. The 346 finally gets overtaken outside Upminster station because it's paused for a driver changeover, allowing us to pick up one final passenger heading to North Ockendon (who could have caught the 370 but we happened to come by first). Upminster has a Brewdog these days, perhaps to balance out the longstanding Wimpy and Waitrose. The first half-mile of St Mary's Lane retains two bus routes for now, much to residents' relief, but after the railway bridge the 346 veers off into Cranham and we enter the 2½ miles of Outer London TfL are about to abandon.
Someone's been busy at Chester Avenue because the westbound bus stop and its bus shelter have already been removed, which seems somewhat premature. Six streets of semis are about to lose their bus service too, I reckon 300 houses all told, although all but Winchester Avenue will still be within 400m walking distance of the 346. The Jobbers Rest and the Thatched House are outside TfL's nominal walking distance too, although both pubs have decent sized car parks and trade will not be harmed. Ditto the golf club and its co-located restaurant Jaxon's Eating House, which sounds like the most Essex name imaginable even though we're still in London, just about.
Franks Cottages are the first houses to be genuinely inconvenienced by the 347's departure, assuming you don't think a bus that barely runs is too much of an inconvenience anyway. There are eight cottages altogether, one with a red telephone box in the front garden, on a gentle bend just before the M25 thunders over. The other properties along this stretch are all farms with long driveways hosting subdivided commercial units, should you be in need of animal feed, joinery supplies or white van hire. The most intriguing is Fairoak Showman's Quarters, a Traveller plot accommodating half a dozen caravans because fairground operators need somewhere to hunker down during the off-season. In total this stretch of St Mary's Lane has seven bus stops that'll never see another bus, not after tomorrow, and will all likely go the same way as poor Chester Avenue.
At London's easternmost mini-roundabout the 347 turns right and follows Clay Tye Lane rather than continuing past the koi carp temple and veering into Essex. Initially there are marshy fields to either side and views of elevated traffic on the M25, then the scrawny hedgerows and outlying houses begin. Many are sprawling bungalows, some are detached hideaways and all have an air of independence about them as befits the Havering/Thurrock margins. Only one house displays a St George's flag, proudly flapping beside its electronic gates, and likewise only one has a Circus Skills Workshops trailer parked outside the kitchen.
Europe's largest datacentre is planned to be built across adjacent fields, hence posters are attached to lampposts decrying the loss of 175 acres of scruffy Green Belt. A large patch has already been swallowed by the geometric forest of Warley Substation and its associated battery farm, but that's a battle lost. The strung-out houses gently coalesce to form an unnamed hamlet - North North Ockendon perhaps - within which are a garden centre, a reptile shop and a nursing home. Arguably they shouldn't be London residents, being the wrong side of the M25, and as of next week TfL will be treating them as such by withdrawing their bus service.
The mitigation is that Clay Tye Lane is also served by bus route 269, a non-TfL service run by NIBS Buses of Wickford. In good news it runs five times a day but in bad news it runs less frequently than the 347 and won't take you to the shops in Upminster or Romford. Instead it connects Brentwood to Grays, both proper Essex destinations, and spends less than five minutes inside the Greater London boundary. TfL have deigned to show the 269 on their not very good map and pointed out it charges special fares, but it's unusual to see them abdicate responsibility entirely. That said hardly anyone here ever caught the 347, they all have cars, and if anyone really wants a red bus rather than a yellow one they can always walk ten minutes up the hill to North Ockendon proper.
North Ockendon proper no longer contains a pub, the Old White Horse having closed in 2022, but it does still have a 14th century church, a holy well and a car dealership. Here the 347 drops off its Upminster passenger and then rattles on out of the village and finally out of London. You could see the adjoining fields better from a double decker, or indeed if someone had cleaned the windows, but they're scrappy fenland fields and paddocks so you're perhaps not missing much. At this speed South Ockendon swiftly arrives, a proper suburb with a village hall, a village green and 400 acres of ex-council housing. The 347 turns off as soon as it possibly can, because why serve Essex when you're funded by Londoners, and draws to an abrupt halt outside thec2c station.
It's probably right that the 347 is being withdrawn, especially now that the 346 has been remodelled to cover much of its route. And whilst it's technically bad news for Franks Cottages and the 40 houses down Clay Tye Lane, conjuring up an alternative service to fill the gap would undoubtedly be a massive waste of money. A bus that only runs four times a day is not going to be missed much anyway. But it's still a shame to see such a quirky rural ride extinguished, so if you want to experience one of the last journeys of London's least frequent bus you have until Friday teatime and then it's gone.
