The decline in passenger numbers, caused by running in competition with a replacement subsidised service run by Witney firm RH Buses, meant the family firm�s services ran at a loss. This was despite many residents remaining loyal to the hourly No 69 service between Chipping Norton, Charlbury and Witney, via Finstock and Hailey, with 5,000 passengers using the buses every month.

Director Paul Worth, whose grandfather Dickie started the firm in 1922 and began running regular bus services in 1930, said: �It was a sad day to finish the services 80 years after my grandfather began them. When it started in the 1930s, the services were so busy even double-deckers weren�t big enough, because there were so many passengers, who didn�t have cars. A lot of passengers remained very loyal through the years and we wanted to continue the service for them, because we�d been doing it for so long. It�s a shame to stop but we had to take a commercial decision at the end of the day, for the long-term future of the company. The way the economy is at present, we can�t have things running at a loss unless you have something else making a good profit to subsidise it.�

The firm which uses the slogan �For a rattling good ride� will in future concentrate on running private-hire coaches and contracts to operate buses carrying schoolchildren in Cherwell and west Oxfordshire. Five drivers were made redundant in March and April after the firm lost out on contracts for school runs. However, the firm still owns 12 coaches for hire and employs 25 staff, who work as drivers, mechanics and back office staff at the firm�s garage on the A44, where they also operate a petrol station and shop.

Mr Worth, who rode on the last service with passengers on Saturday, May 29, had driven for the firm for 27 years until he contracted meningitis and then suffered a stroke last year. His 68-year-old father Richard, the firm�s managing director, still gets behind the wheel from time to time to fill in when drivers are ill. Among the famous passengers who have used the firm�s services are former Witney MP and Home Secretary Lord Hurd and ex-Beatle Ringo Starr, who boarded one of the firm�s coaches with his former Bond girl wife Barbara Bach to get to her sister�s wedding in 1993.