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On 1 November 1968 Martins Bank Limited becomes one of the
Barclays Group of Companies – a status maintained until close of Business on Friday
12 December 1969. The following Monday, 730 branches of the bank will open
their doors under the name of Barclays.
As we find ourselves in times tinged with the sadness of the closure
of hundreds of Bank Branches, including those that are former Martins Bank
Branches, we really do appreciate the continued support of our
ever increasing band of loyal visitors and contributors. There are now fewer than 100 Branches of
Martins Bank still open, and to mark their passing, our Branch Watch feature
now includes a separate page featuring
details of THE LAST 101 BRANCHES . Our most recent news stories are shown below, and you can
catch up with some previous stories in-depth, by downloading our half-yearly
Newsletters (see above). Don’t forget
to visit our sister site - Lewis’s Bank Archive - which tells the story of
Britain’s department store bank for the nine years that it was a subsidiary
of Martins Bank. Click HERE to visit the Lewis’s Bank
Archive web site (opens in a new window).
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Attention grasshoppers
everywhere!
Fifty
years on, “the eagle and the grasshopper, a fable” has been re-written as
an invitation to ALL former Martins Staff to attend one of two special
lunches which are being held later this year in Liverpool and London. This is a chance to meet with former
colleagues and reflect on the major changes of the last half century, and
places are going fast. The London
lunch takes place on 12 December, and the Liverpool lunch on 16 December,
2019. To find out more, please click on either of these “eagle and
grasshopper” posters, and to register your
interest, contact Dave Baldwin, Secretary Grasshopper Pensioners’ Club: grasshoppers@btinternet.com
Invitations to these events are being co-ordinated by the Grasshopper
Pensioners’ Club, and the lunches themselves are open to ALL former staff of
Martins Bank, whether or not they may be members of one of the many
Barclays/Martins pensioner groups around the country.
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When Cotton was once
more, briefly, “King”…
 On
the 18 May 1954 Liverpool’s Cotton Exchange, which had been closed since
1941 was once more open for business. Martins Bank deemed it a prudent move
to establish within the Exchange Buildings, a sub Branch of the bank
despite the whole thing being just a stone’s throw from Liverpool City
Office Branch at 4 Water Street.
These advertisements, which have been remastered from the original
appeared in the local press announcing first that the new sub Branch was on
its way, and then that it was up and running. The Cotton Exchange itself had remained
closed from 1946 following the establishment by the Government of the the
Raw Cotton Commission which largely favoured imported cotton.
Martins Bank had previously operated a branch in the same part of
the City – Liverpool Exchange Branch was opened in 1890 by the Bank of
Liverpool, and remained in service until 1932. The rush to support the cotton industry
was however not enough, as the business of the Exchange more or less folded
in February 1963, and its original shares were sold off. Ironically, 1963
was designated “National Productivity Year” by the Government, but this all
came too late for once mighty Cotton Exchange. Incidentally, Liverpool
Cotton Exchange Branch is the 999th
branch building to have been added to our Branch Network pages. (That is
the total number of buildings so far identified as have been used between
1928 and 1969 as Branches or sub Branches of Martins Bank Limited).
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The “Pink Circulars”
continue…
Fifty
years ago, from the 7th of February,
Martins Bank issues a series of Integration Circulars. Printed on pink paper,
each circular comes with yet more instructions to staff on how the various
methods of accounting and working will be integrated between Barclays and
Martins, so that by the Appointed Day – 15 December 1969 – the remaining
730 Branches of Martins will turn “seemlessly” in those belonging to
Barclays…
It is
now April 1969, and there has been a short respite in the issue of the pink
circulars, between February and the issue of the circular shown here, which
is issued on 23 April 1969. More in depth Loans/Securities type stuff we’re
afraid, and this time it is being pointed out to the Securities/Lending
staff of Martins Bank, that Barclays operates a DIFFERENT system for
performing searches at Companies House.
If the Martins policy of searching at regular intervals (including
sometimes whether or not a customer is borrowing or wanting further
funds) was continued today, it would probably have a detrimental effect on
that company or individual’s credit rating.
Today this sort of work and decision making has long since left bank
branches.
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1000 Branches?
 Could it be that Martins
Bank, largest of the “small six” banks in the 1960s actually had as many as
1000 branches? Well yes AND
no. At any one time, the largest number of Branches actually IN SERVICE
reached just short of 750, but nevertheless by December 2018 we had
identified 996 buildings that for one reason or another were used as
Branches of Martins Bank Limited between 1928 and 1969. Some for example
were “duplicated” – that is to say that when the Lancashire and Yorkshire
Bank came on board in 1928, several towns and villages had more than one
branch for a month or two. Some of the Branches destoyred or damaged in
world War Two had to be replaced, often at a different address from the
original. A significant number were
TEMPORARY branches, of which there are two distinct varieties: Cities and
towns into which Martins began to expand in the 1930s often housed the Bank
in a shop front or other temporary building until the Branches themselves
were built or otherwise made ready for more permanent occupation. Coventry, Bristol, Birmingham, Derby, and
Reading had temporary Branches or sub Branches. In the case of Reading, the
Second World War meant that the “temporary” branch at 6 Station Road
(pictured, right) was actually in use for twenty-one years before the Bank
was able to move the business to its original planned location in the town.
- Incidentally, images of these temporary branches are extremely rare, and
we are indebted to the Geoff Taylor Collection of Martins Bank Photographs
for this photo of Reading. - The
second batch of temporary branches was created by the Bank’s extensive
programme of rebuilding and refurbishing older branches from the late 1950s
into the mid 1960s. Thanks to the
ever growing archive of information collected by our friends at the British
Newspaper Archive, we have recently been able to add two of these to the
count of Branch buildings, taking us tantalisingly closer to the 1000
mark! In 1959 BELFORD Northumberland Branch was demolished and
rebuilt, with a temporary Branch in use nearby at 32 High Street. Between 1962 and 1963, Martins decided to
completely revamp the interior of CHESTER Branch, moving the business temporarily from
35 Eastgate street to 42 Eastgate Row.
If you click on the links for these two branches, you will be able
to see the restored advertising taken out by Martins in the local press
keep customers informed of developments. With Belford and Chester, and now LIVERPOOL
COTTON EXCHANGE, we have reached the tantalising figure of
999 Branch Buildings - we are hoping that newspaper advertising will
continue to be a goldmine of Martins Bank information, and that we can soon
announce to 1000th building…
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Ellesmere Port Thursday 25 May 1944
It is not often that we
can date a photograph to the exact  year, let alone the
month and the day too. We were
delighted to receive this wonderful atmospheric image of the Bank’s Ellesmere
Port Station Road Branch from Craig Turner, a regular contributor to the
Archive.
The photograph shows his
father, Peter Turner aged just sixteen, and standing rather nervously at the
side of someone we have so far been unable to identify, smiling and counting
up the banknotes! A notice for the May Bank Holiday – 29 May 1944 is on the
wall behind them, and above Peter’s head is the actual date, the 25th. Images
of Ellesmere Port’s original Branch of Martins Bank are extremely hard to
come by.
Whilst plenty of photos
exist of the newer Whitby Road Branch which opens in 1966, there are no
period photographs of either the exterior or interior of Station Road in the
Barclays collection. This newly found
photograph will shortly take its place on our Ellesmere Port page, and in the
meantime, if anyone can hazard a guess as to the identity of the cashier on
the left, please do get in touch with us at the usual address – gutinfo@btinternet.com
ECHOes of the past…
The Liverpool ECHO newspaper
is almost as old as one of Martins Bank’s  founding entities, the Bank
of Liverpool. Throughout the life of the modern day bank – 1928 to 1969 – the
ECHO was the preferred organ of communication for the Bank, as they spread
out across the country opening more and more new branches. It was a good way
of letting customers and shareholders know of its successes. At the time of
the celebrations marking 400 years since Martins Private Bank was founded in
London, the ECHO produced a lavish four page spread bringing congratulations
to the bank from many local and national companies who  were either customers of
Martins, or who had supplied equipment and services to them over the years.
Once again it is the Liverpool ECHO that we must thank for this spread over
the weekend of 24/25 November 2018 alerting former staff and customers to the
planned reunions next year which will mark fifty years since Martins and
Barclays were merged. The wording from the article is reproduced below with
the kind permission of the LIVERPOOL ECHO. Paddy Shennan, who wrote the
article is also asking for anyone who knows Brenda Carter, the cashier who
was first to demonstrate Martins Auto Cashier machine to contact him at paddyshennan@liverpooleecho.co.uk
 AS former
members of staff plan a reunion in Liverpool, here's a chance to see how the
famous Martins Bank looked in Water Street more than 60 years ago. We also
feature an ECHO cutting from 10 years later - October 31,1967 – which
revealed that Martins in Church Street had become the first bank in the north
of England to offer its customers instant money - courtesy of its new “auto
cashier" machine. And looking ahead, December 12, 2019 will mark the
50th anniversary of the merger of Martins and Barclays Banks. Martins was the
only major clearing bank to have its head office outside London, and was
based at 4 Water Street in Liverpool. The Grasshopper Pensioners’ Club (a
social organisation, supported by Barclays, for the benefit of those who
worked for Martins) is in the process of planning two or three events next
December - one in London, a second in its "spiritual home” of Liverpool
and a third elsewhere in the north of England, its “true heartland” subject
to demand. In a message to his former colleagues, secretary David Baldwin
said: “If you are reading this note and worked for Martins Bank, perhaps you
will recall anticipating working for a different bank on the following Monday
and were probably wondering what the future would hold for you. You may also
have wondered why on earth the (Barclays) Eagle had swooped on our beloved
Martins.
 “Almost 50 years
on and despite the passing of time I am certain that our memories of working
for Martins remain precious to us all and always will. We were all much
younger then and had careers to forge. With those pressures gone, perhaps we
will have time to meet again on the 50th anniversary of the final day of
Martins’ existence (Thursday December 12, 2019) to remember the end of an era
and reunite with former colleagues. “It might be viewed as the 'Last Supper’
but I certainly hope not, as I am certain that we all value friendships both
old and new which were forged by working for Martins, and as long as some of
us are still alive we will ensure that the name of Martins Bank will continue
to be remembered as ‘The bank that went to extremes to be helpful’’ Former
Martins employees can contact David Baldwin if they are interested in
attending, by emailing him at grasshoppers@btinternet.com – while more
information can be found at www.martinsbank.co.uk The photographs here, meanwhile,
show the horseshoe-shaped area in the Water Street bank, and David explains:
"There was a tie, known as The Horseshoe tie, which could only be owned
and worn by those members of staff who actually worked inside 'the horseshoe'
- the name given to the enclosed workspace behind the counter." And then
there is the photograph (below) and story headlined NOW - INSTANT MONEY!
Regarding the revolutionary move by Martins Bank in Church Street, the ECHO
reported – on October 31, 1967 - that "day or night, all the customers
need to do to get £10 is feed a plastic card in an automatic machine outside
the bank, record a special code on a push button panel and out pops the money
in a sealed packet." A sealed packet? Luxury! The story added that bank
officials were confident it was thief-proof, while the cost of the machine was
£1,600 plus £500 needed to fund its installation. The photograph featured
Miss Brenda Carter, a senior cashier at the bank – if Brenda or anybody who
knows her is reading this, please get in touch with
paddyshennan@liverpooleecho.co.uk
Take three girls…
 We were thrilled to obtain a copy of this fabulous photograph from our
good friends at Barclays Group Archives. It shows three members of the staff
at Martins Bank’s Liverpool Computer Centre, Derby House, performing various
tasks with the mighty Ferranti Pegasus II computer, still in service after
nearly ten years of processing the accounts of the Bank’s Liverpool
customers. The wonderful Pegasus has
nothing that we might recognise from today’s computers, but it certainly does
have an air of 1950s sci-fi about it!
The nearest to a screen is the pair of oscilloscopes. The long and
winding paper tape on the left is used both for programming and input. The
only thing that looks familiar is the printer on the right.
There is a small mystery here – neither we nor Barclays know the names
of the girls in the photo. Perhaps one of them is YOU, or perhaps you know
who one or more of them are. If you can help, please do get in touch at the
usual address gutinfo@btinternet.com.
You can see more of Pegasus and learn about how Martins adapted it to
handle the daily work of forty branches by visiting our NEW TECHNOLOGY feature. There, you will find pages for LIVERPOOL COMPUTER CENTRE and for the PEGASUS II COMPUTER.
News for family tree researchers…
 At Martins Bank Archive, we have been working
for more than a decade on our Martins Staff Database, which we believe to be
the only digitised archive of the staff who worked for the bank. With around
half a million entries, it is now a comprehensive record for the period
1946-1969, and the number of earlier records dating back to the late 1800s is
now also substantial. The vast
majority of the Staff members included are sadly no longer with us, and for
those who are we have made special mention on our DATA PROTECTION page, in line with new
rules which came into force on 25 May 2018. All of the information held has
already been in the public domain for a minimum of 50 years. Nearly all of it
was published and distributed in paper form to Martins Bank’s Staff in
“Martins Bank Magazine”. Our database brings together for the first time,
information which allows us to produce career details for those researching
their family tree, or those who want to remember their career with the Bank.
Information falls into several categories – New Entrant, Transferred, Appointed,
Married, Retired, Died. We are now in the process of adding further
previously published details including public service along with any titles
thus conferred, and details of training courses undertaken and Banking or
other relevant examinations taken and passed.
If you would like to know what details we have for you or a relative
who once worked for the Bank, then please do get in touch with us at the
usual address gutinfo@btinternet.com.
 …and an appeal:
We are always looking
for head and shoulders photographs of staff as they were when they worked for
the Bank. Martins tended to publish mainly photographs of the MALE staff, and
we would like to redress the balance by being able to add images of female
staff members to the staff galleries which are shown at the bottom of nearly
all of our Branch Pages here within our Online Archive. Also - if you are the relative of a member
of staff who is no longer with us, and you would like to send us a photo to
be placed on each relevant Branch or Departmental page of our web site, then
please do get in touch with us at the usual address gutinfo@btinternet.com. It was the Staff that made Martins Bank so
special and fondly remembered, and the more faces we can add, the stronger
the collective memory will become.
Pictured
here is Sally Edge, Cambridge Branch, 1967.
Buyer Beware….
We have left the following article here once again for reference, to
help explain the position regarding the theft of copyrighted images for the
purposes of re-sale. There is a common misconception that if you
can Google an image, then it is “in the public domain” and you can do what
you want with it. Even some staff at eBay® believed this until they were
recently put right – if you take or
copy someone else’s work or property without their permission or
acknowledgement, and sell it on to
make even a penny out of it, this is breach of copyright, and the real
owner can take legal recourse to stop further theft and misuse of their
property. There are currently on eBay® a number of listings
of photographs for sale, showing scenes from the past and old buildings
including these four (and many more) Branches of Martins Bank. These images originated on our web site. As you can see, under our agreement with
the owner, we prominently display copyright. These images have been copied
and printed onto cheap photographic paper. The seller even has the gall to
add their own watermark to the displayed images to prevent others from
stealing them!!!
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STAINLAND
Image ©
Barclays
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SITTINGBOURNE
Image
created by Martins Bank Archive and © Barclays
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BURTON
UPON TRENT
Image ©
Barclays
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WALLASEY
Image ©
Barclays
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As well as being
against copyright law, these items are worthless, having little more than
sentimental value – you will often find that collections and archives will
make images available free of charge for private use, but you MUST check with
them first. You should always check the seller’s right to copy the image –
reputable sites such as eBay® do now allow you to report copyright
infringement. For ANY item of memorabilia, the best thing to do is shop
around and compare prices – in the case of Martins Bank there are often up to
twenty different items for sale on eBay® alone on any given day. For printed
material which looks as if it has been copied, or actually claims to be a
copy, ALWAYS question the seller about copyright.
Best Regards, Jonathan.
Westmorland, Sunday 31ST March 2019
WHILST MARTINS BANK
ARCHIVE HAS NO CONNECTION WITH THE DAY TO DAY TRADING ACTIVITIES OF THE
BARCLAYS GROUP OF
COMPANIES, WE ARE GRATEFUL FOR THE CONTINUED GENEROUS GUIDANCE, ADVICE
AND SUPPORT OF BARCLAYS
GROUP ARCHIVES IN THE BUILDING AND SHAPING OF THIS ONLINE SOCIAL HISTORY.
 R
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