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WELCOME SITE MENU BRANCHES COMMENT CONTACT US LEWIS’S BANK
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BRANCH
CLOSURES 2017 It is with much regret that we report the closure
- at 12 noon on the dates shown - of the following Branches: FARNINGHAM –
Friday 1 Sep HIGHER
TRANMERE – Friday 29 Sep LIVERPOOL
WALTON
– Friday 6 Oct LOFTUS – Friday 6 Oct LONGTOWN – Friday 6 Oct AMBLE- Friday 3 Nov CROSS HILLS –
Friday 17 Nov We
would like to offer a huge thankyou to ALL the staff – past and present – who
have worked at these Branches. |
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WELCOME to September at Martins Bank Archive, and to MARTINS
BANK MAGAZINE – our news feature in honour of the Bank’s staff publication,
which from 1946 to 1969 brought news of changing times, new Branches and services and even new technologies to Staff
in England Wales, the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man… Our latest news stories are shown below,
and you can catch up on some previous stories in-depth by downloading our
half-yearly newsletters. |
SPRING/SUMMER 2016
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AUTUMN/WINTER 2016 |
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The Grasshopper Returns! We were delighted to be contacted on the Martins Bank Facebook Page by
Angie Frith, proud owner of the building that was formerly Martins Bank’s Branch
at SOUTHPORT HILLSIDE. Angie runs a pub there now,
and has named it “The Grasshopper”.
Once again a people centred enterprise is at work in this original
branch of the Lancashire and Yorkshire Bank. What’s more, customers of The
Grasshopper will be able to see some items of memorabilia from the days of
Martins Bank.
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Advertisements Re-Mastered…
Banks are bound by a “gentlemen’s agreement” NOT to advertise their
services on television – this agreement holds until the late 1960s (see also ADVERTISING –
THE RACE TO TELEVISION). In the meantime,
apart from word of mouth, product leaflets and Branches themselves,
newspapers and magazines are used to get the banking message across. In order to stand out from each other, each
of the ELEVEN CLEARING BANKS uses any number of eye-catching devices to drum up business. The 1960s will bring some adverts that can
only be described as psychedelic. but in the 1940s and 50s, Bank advertising
errs much more on the side of “strong
and stable” than “wild and wacky”.
At this time, Martins Bank spends a considerable amount of its
advertising budget on paintings by top artists of the day such as Graham Smith,
Geoffrey Wedgwood, Josh Armitage (a.k.a. IONICUS), Victor Furnivall, H A Crosby, and J C
Armstrong. The advertisements
featuring these new paintings are grouped into series, which may have 6, 10
or even 12 individual ads. Amongst
these, “The Stately Homes of England”, “Famous (river) banks”, “The
Stagecoach Era”, and “Roman Towns” can be found in just about every national
and local newspaper in the 1940s. The
Bank decides to publish many of the commissioned paintings with Martins Bank
Magazine for staff to appreciate. We
have used these superior images to re-master a large number of advertisements
for display within the Online Archive.
Some are shown here, and over the coming weeks many more will be added
to the web site. |
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More
Branches Found…
Image © Northcliffe Media Limited Image
created courtesy of THE BRITISH LIBRARY BOARD. Image
reproduced with kind permission of The British Newspaper Archive |
We have recently added three Branches to our Branch Network pages. Each represents an original building from which
Martins relocated, either to a permanent site, because the original was too
small or no longer viable where it was.
At Northampton, Martins opened its first Branch at 17
WOOD STREET, before moving two years later to
18 the Drapery, still open today. The original sub-Branch at Fulwell
Sunderland, had the quite fabulous address of 16˝ SEA ROAD (moving to 52 Sea Road in 1963)! At Sheffield, the original Branch of the
Equitable Bank at LEOPOLD STREET was used until 1930, when Martins moved into Telephone Buildings, West
Street. It will probably not be
possible to find images of the original buildings, but as you will see from
the article below about London’s Oxford Circus Branch, we never say never
about these things! A fourth “branch” has also been identified, this time at
Burnley. At the end of World War 2, the
Bank advertises in the local paper to let customers of 111 Colne Road
sub-Branch know that a temporary office at 74 Colne Road will take its place
for a few weeks. |
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…and more
Branches lost…
The march of progress has caught up once again with a large number
former Branches of the Bank, as the reality of customers finding “other ways”
to transact their business makes the maintenance of a branch network an
expensive luxury. As more closures are
announced, it has become difficult to keep up with them all, and if you
visited this page recently you may not have seen the up to date list for
2017, which is shown here on the right.
As ever, we would like to pass on our thanks to all those who have
worked at these branches down the years under a variety of Banks, including
of course Martins and Barclays, but also going back to the days of the Craven
Bank, Bank of Liverpool, Bank of Liverpool and Martins, Lancashire and
Yorkshire Bank and the North Eastern Banking Company. Please note that the branches being closed
are former branches of MARTINS BANK. If you would like to know the names of
the many other BARCLAYS Branches that have been or are to be closed this
year, please visit their Branch Closures Page by clicking HERE . |
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Oxford
Circus Branch!
From “The Victoria Line Report Number 2 – Down and Along” British Transport
Films, August 1963 Images © BFI National Archive
A
landmark year for a landmark building!
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 for photographs, showing scenes from the past and old
buildings including these four 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!!!
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 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, Thursday 31ST August 2017
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.
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