11-59-60 Liverpool Old Swan

It is as if someone were designing a wedding cake rather than a building, and to look at it, Old Swan could easily have been constructed from red and white LEGO® bricks. Messrs Grayson and Ould Architects have really gone to town here - with a tower, a mock belfry, ornamental windows, bay windows, a brick arch or two, a stacked roof with curlecues, an entrance porch and even balustrades at the lower level, this part of Liverpool is obvously in for a treat in 1906 when the Bank of Liverpool moves in to its newly built Branch at Old Swan. It is also a treat that has continued ever since with Barclays still occupying the building nearly 120 years later! The photograph below dates from somewhere around the late 1940s. A mass of tram wires can be seen overhead, and a long queue of what looks like expectant bank customers, unless of course they are simply waiting for the next tram! The cheque shown below from Old Swan Branch is one of the first to employ a number of new security features, and of course the Magnetic Ink Line that heralds the age of reading and sorting cheques by electronic means.

Image © The Building News 24 August 1906

You can read more about this, including how Martins is the first bank to use this equipment and develop the system still used today in the UK, in our TECHNOLOGY section. The complicated patterning across the main body of the cheque is designed to prevent fraud. Prior to this design, Martins Bank Cheques had the words “MARTINS BANK LIMITED” printed over and over again in the background across the entire surface.

1960 s Old Swan Cheque with MICR Line MBA.jpg

Our feature focusses on the retirement in 1965 of Mr W C Frost, Manager of Old Swan for five years. These are still firmly the days when a job in a bank was a job for life. Martins Bank’s Managers are recorded retiring in the mid to late 1960s having served in some cases up to forty seven years of their lives for the same employer. Mr frost has an amazing total service of forty-three years, and is no doubt ready now to hang up his Bank tie for good…

Image © Barclays Ref 0030/1676

1965 02 MBM.jpg 1960 to 1965 Mr W C Frost Manager MBM-Su65P55.jpg when Mr Frost, Manager of Old Swan branch, Liverpool, retired at the end of March after 43 years’ service, over 50 past and present colleagues met at the branch to take sherry with him. They were welcomed by Mr P. G. Kennerley (Pro Manager), who spoke of the high esteem in which Mr Frost was held by both staff and customers, and after Mrs Angela Thompson had presented a bouquet to Mrs Frost he called upon the District General Manager to make the presentation. Mr Buchanan had known Mr Frost since his own junior days at Great Crosby branch under Mr Frost’s guidance and he described him as a most kindly and sympathetic man. He made special mention of Mr Frost’s interest in amateur football—he was treasurer of the I. Zingari Football League for many years—and after thanking him for his loyal service handed him a cheque on behalf of the many subscribers. Mr Frost’s reply, interspersed with reminiscences, was one of thanks to all his friends for joining him on his last day in the Bank, for their kind thoughts and for their generosity: the subscription money would go towards a greenhouse. Although a Londoner, Mr Frost entered the Bank in 1921 at Liverpool Foreign branch where he served eight years. After moving to Toxteth branch he spent all his career at Liverpool District branches and was appointed Manager of Blundellsands branch in 1955 and of Old Swan branch in 1960. He spent the years 1942-46 in the R.A.F.