The Amos family originated in Belchamp St Paul, Essex, very close to the Suffolk border. There were many related Amos families in Belchamp St Paul, mainly farm workers, but not all. This account is about one particular family of cousins, who for three generations ran the village stores and baker, and later a local bus company as well. Amos buses ran for seventy years from about 1930.

So where is Belchamp St Paul? This map shows the area, and you can see that there are three places with Belchamp in the name, known on modern road signs as The Belchamps. The nearest big towns are in Suffolk, the main one being Sudbury, the nearest one Clare.

The Amos business goes back to the late 1800s when the village bakery and grocers was run by Lewis Tarbun and his wife Sarah.  When they became too old to run the the business in the early 1900s, it was taken over by their nephew James Amos.

This map shows the location of the bakery and shop, just next door to the Half Moon pub. 

James continued to run the business until he died in 1929. During this time he expanded the business to include local haulage work, especially sugar beet from the farms to the factory. 

His son James took over the business in 1929. The business expanded again in the early 1930s with a contract for carrying schoolchildren to school, using a14 seater Chevrolet like the one below.

The son James Amos continued to run the business with a daily bus service to Sudbury through the local villages. When the war came there was a demand for carrying service people to airfields that were being built in the area, and James Amos was able to buy a brand new Bedford like the one below, with permission from the Ministry of Supply as an essential service provider. The picture shows one of the Amos buses waiting in Market Street, Sudbury in the early 1960s

James died in 1962, and the business transferred to his son William (Billy).  Billy continued to run the buses until 2002 when he retired. As well as the local bus service, Billy also ran coach excursions. These pictures show first a coach with Billy at the wheel in Sudbury, then a coach at the premises in Belchamp St Paul, and finally the small Dodge bus used in the final years of the service, again at Sudbury.

We visited Belchamp St Paul in 2015,  when we were researching the Amos family. A lady in the Half Moon pub mentioned to us that there used to be a bus service run by the Amos family.  It was that conversation that sparked off the investigation. We also saw on that visit a building by the name of Little Amos Cottage, and we wondered if there was a connection with our Amos family. And indeed there is. Here's a photo of it. It's the same building that used to be the shop, shown above in the 1925 photograph.