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Home to a prestigious golf club,
and to the even more prestigious Bentham School, Martins Bank’s Branch at
High Bentham, is one of the most delightful in the West Riding of
Yorkshire. This side view of the bank
is familiar to many of us who worked at Bentham, as a handy pathway leads to
it from a car park. In Martins’ time it
would actually have made sense to have the side of the bank as the front, by
virtue of the counter and branch layout.
Bentham will always remind us of summer days and scenic drives across
two counties to get to work. Happy
days indeed… For the first of our Bentham features, we go back to 1951 and
the visit to the Branch of Martins Bank Magazine. Then we move forward to 1967, and the
memories of Martins Colleague Dave Baldwin who recalls for us his time there
on relief, and the complications that can go with the idea of a week’s free
beer!
Visiting Bentham was  for
us almost like going home, a return to youthful haunts. We have spent many
happy days in the district camping and potholing, the latter sport being
peculiar to the limestone districts of the country where caves and
underground passages abound. Bentham itself is situated amid the magnificent
scenery of the Pennine range just inside the West Riding of Yorkshire, twelve
miles east of Lancaster, and our branch is excellently sited on the main
street at the top of the hill leading down to the station. It has only
recently become a full branch, having formerly been sub to Settle.
Nevertheless, as a sub office of the old Craven Bank it has served the needs
of the Bank's customers for over half a century. When first we used to visit
Bentham the upper floors of the little building served as offices, but the
premises have now been re-designed and a most attractive little house for the
manager and his wife has taken the place of the office.
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In Service: 8 March 1899 until 12 July 2023
Branch Images © Barclays
Ref 0030-0159
Sep1
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Branch
Images © Barclays Ref 0030-0159
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Thoroughly modernised, with two large bedrooms, a tiled
bathroom, large, sunny living room and kitchenette, one of the cosiest of
Bank houses has been made, and in these days of housing difficulties Mr.
Dodgson and his wife are a very fortunate couple. The only fly in the
ointment is the absence of a garden, and they are both fond of gardening. Still, they are not town dwellers and
this is in the heart of the country and we are quite sure that a solution
to their problem will not be hard to find. The office itself is small, but
light and very cosy, quite one of the most attractive small offices we
have. Mr. Dodgson commenced his
career at Barnoldswick in 1915, returning there after service in the First
World War from 1917 to 1919. After spells at Skipton and Colne he went to
Keighley where he became Pro Manager in 1946. He was appointed Assistant Manager at
Settle in 1948 and Manager at Bentham last year. He plays golf in Settle
and Bentham and has taken up amateur dramatics since going to Bentham. Mrs. Dodgson has extended the scope of her household duties
to include the staff, and makes it her business to supply tea at the
appropriate intervals during the day, a friendly ‘family’ gesture which is
much appreciated. J. W. Parker has performed all his service at Settle
where, apart from the war years he worked from 1923 until he was posted to
Bentham last year. During the war he served in the Corps of Signals as a
cipher operator and went to the Continent with the invading armies,
finishing up on the Rhine. He served for some months in the same unit as M.
J. Downes of Head Office Inspection Department.
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  Mr.
Parker has a son who is doing quite brilliantly at Giggleswick School, and
he hopes to win a scholarship to Cambridge before long. His daughter goes
to the school which was attended by the famous Brontë sisters.Mr. Parker is
another golfer and plays at Settle, but is hoping to be able to find a
house in Bentham before long. A. B. Pitts
is the third member of the staff, which he joined at Bingley in 1919, going
to Bentham last year. He is a keen rugby football player and a good worker
and the others will be sorry to lose him when he leaves to perform his
National Service later in the year. For
lunch we motored with Mr. and Mrs. Dodgson to Melling Hall, formerly the
home of the Darlington family, and now an attractive country hotel. The grand sweep
of the Pennine range, the winding lanes and flowering hedgerows, the little
streams running through pretty villages which would be vulgarised were they
more accessible, the upland farms and the lichened churches have much to
offer of peace and contentment to the man who makes his home among them and
is willing to make them a part of his daily life. And everywhere around, easy of access, are the silent
fells, those breezy hills of God of which the poet wrote. Among them one
feels that Time stands still and yet their very age makes one conscious of
the endless rolling-on of Time.
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There is no such thing as
a free lunch BEER.
  In May/June 1967
I was sent as a relief cashier to Bentham for a week and stayed at 'The Black
Bull' (diagonally opposite the branch) and on the Tuesday and Friday, was
sent to Ingleton (the branch in the image). Not many customers though. I
could have quite-easily commuted by train from Keighley but was told that I
had to stay and that my willingness and experience 'would be good for my career'. Was it? I don't think so but I
enjoyed a different walk every evening
after sitting in the pub reading on my first night. On Tuesday, I walked down
the back road to Wennington and back up the main road; Wednesday it was
Clapham on the back road returning by the main road and on Thursday it was
Ingleton via Burton in-Lonsdale and returning via a more-direct route. Good
job it was a decent week weather-wise. Then back home on the train on Friday.
  Frank
Shuttleworth (left) was the first cashier and Frank Alston (right) the
Manager. We still had to 'hand-post' the current account ledgers (quite an
experience as Keighley was mechanised) and on Thursday we couldn't balance
the weekly return. Before I left,
Deryk Ingham (Assistant Manager at Keighley) told me that it was acceptable
for me to buy a pint of beer each evening and charge it to my expenses claim,
which I did, along with the 2/6 lunch and 6d for a cup of tea which I had at the farmer's cafe above the
railway station. On the Friday, I duly
cashed my expenses claim but, later, was called into Frank Alston's office and given the 'third degree': 'We
don't pay for alcohol Mr Baldwin', I
was told, so my claim was reduced by 4 x 1/6d (6/-) and I was made to repay
the amount. On my return to Keighley, Deryk Ingham asked how things had been
but I didn't mention my 'entertainment' until he pressed me ('and did you claim
for a pint each evening David? he asked) to which I replied that I had but
that it had not been permitted. 'Who said that it was not permitted' was the
response? 'Mr Alston'. Shortly afterwards Deryk Ingham came out of his office
with 6/- in his hand and gave it to me after he had (apparently) spoken with
Frank Alston and then claimed the amount from Bentham branch. Deryk Ingham,
who interviewed me when I first applied for a job with Martins, was one of the best managers for
whom I ever worked and his knowledge
and ability was exceptional. He was a 'typical' 'real' 'Martins Man' who died before his time.
 I have very pleasant memories of working at Bentham
for Barclays in the 1990s, and despite the town being so close to the
Lancashire border, when you visit Bentham, you definitely know you are in
Yorkshire. No namby pamby new fangled sandwich shops, the branch is
conveniently situated next door to a pub. This is a dual convenience, as the
bank is no distance at all to pay in the pub takings, and on late nights and
tricky balance days at the bank, the pub is handy for liquid refreshment – a
peaceful, and mutually beneficial co-existence!!!
Editor, 2013.
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