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To quote Private Frazer from ‘Dad’s Army’: - “ay, it’s a wild ‘n’ lonely place,
y’understand…” Shap is tucked away to
the north of Westmorland, and until the early 1970s the A6 will be the only
route to it AND
through it. Regularly cut off by snow,
the summit of Shap itself is 1036 feet above sea level, and not somewhere you
would want to be stranded. |
In Service:
January 1920 until 8 May 1942
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Extract from Bank of Liverpool and Martins Annual Report
1920 © Barclays
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For more than twenty years Martins Bank’s sub-Branch
at Shap is a lifeline for the local community . Until like many
others, it is forced to close for the Second World War, and it has stayed
like that ever since. The demands of the Kennet Committee on the staff of
British business depletes many a workforce in the War, and whilst thousands
of women step in and usually do a much better job than the men, sometimes
there are simply not enough of them to go round. You can read more about
Martins Bank’s army of women Bank Managers in our MARTINS AT WAR
feature. Shap’s opening hours for 1927
are provided for us here by Kelly’s Directory of Westmorland, courtesy of the
University of Leicester Historical Directories Database. |
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We can see from the Kelly’s extract that even in the
late 1920s, Penrith has a number of remote sub-Branches – of these, the
office at Shap has faded into history and left us with little information to
go on… If you have any memories or images of this or any of martins Bank’s
980+ Branch buildings, please do get in touch with us at the usual address: martinsbankarchive@btinternet.com
.
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