


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 obviously 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, right) 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.
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In Service: 1893 (but from 1906
at these premises) until 15 December 2017

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Image © The Building News 24 August 1906
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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 for the
clearing of cheques, 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.



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…
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Image © Barclays Ref 0030-1676
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 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.

Robert Montgomery’s amazing collection of modern day UK
bank branches has yielded this lovely shot of Old Swan Branch in May 2014,
just slightly more than three and a half years before its permanent
closure…


Image © Barclays Ref 0030-1676
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Image © Martins Bank Archive Collections
– Robert Montgomery
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In our Branch History below,
you will see a much larger number of entries than we usually provide in
that particular section of our Branch Network feature. This is because our friends at Barclays
Group Archives unearthed for us, details from Martins Bank’s premises
register, which demonstrate a busy life for the building at 521 Prescot
Road…
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