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From Drive-In Branches to
computerisation and the birth of the Cash Dispenser, it seems Martins Bank
has it all. 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 80 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).
A time to remember…
 As 2019 draws
to a close, the fiftieth anniversary of the merger of Martins Bank with Barclays
is being marked by FOUR commemorative dinners for Martins Bank Pensioner
Staff. The Grasshopper Penioners Club
have organised a dinner in LIVERPOOL, to remember the Bank that dared to be
different and maintained a Head Office outside
the Capital, and a dinner in LONDON, in memory of this particular district of
the Bank, whose multi-storey office was in Lombard Street, where Thomas
Gresham first offered a banking service in 1563. The London Dinner takes place at the Union
Jack Club on Thursday 12th December, and the Liverpool event will
be held at the Racquet Club on Monday 16th December 2019. These two dates come closest to the days in
1969 when Martins branches closed for the weekend and re-opened as
Barclays. For those who might not be
able to attend either of the two main dinners, two more have been arranged in
the North, one took place at ILKLEY on 27th November, the other at
PRESTON on 6th December. Full details of the Liverpool and London
events can be obtained by contacting Grasshopper Club Secretary Dave Baldwin,
see the Grasshopper
Club News page. Here you will also
find application forms for the commemorative items which have been produced
to mark the special anniversary of the Merger. After fifty years it seems astonishing that
around FIVE HUNDRED Martins Bank pensioners will be taking part in the
commemorative lunch events, and this is testimony to the high regard with
which these people hold their former employer.
The Battle for Saturday mornings…
  Fifty years
ago - on 1 July 1969 - the Committee of London Clearing Bankers took the
decision to close all banks in England and Wales on a Saturday. Working on Saturday had been a contentious
issue for more than one hundred years, and in a new feature we look back to
1868 and right up to the imposition of new bank opening hours in 1969 to see
just what all the fuss is about. With
an arbitrary policy on opening hours, it depended very much on who you banked
with, or which bank you worked for, as to whether Saturday was treated as
half or a full working day. We also
have first hand accounts from two people who worked for banks in 1969 and
whose lives were first affected, then changed largely for the good by the
decision to close. Major changes to
the banking world were either in progress or just round the corner in 1969,
and by 1970 we say goodbye to Martins, District, National Provincial and
Westminster from the eleven clearing banks, in a series of mergers. Computerisation MUST be complete in all
banks by 1971 to cope with the new decimal currency, and the humble CASH MACHINE, which was
trialled first in the world by Barclays and Martins within weeks of each
other, will be needed to step in as a kind of surrogate cashier to calm those
angry at the loss of Saturday service.
You can read much more by clicking on the leaflet above left.
Another rare image found…
 Last month
(see “one thing leads to another”, below) we were celebrating the discovery
of a rare photograph, showing the Bank’s sub Branch at Dalston
(Carlisle). This month we were stunned
by the arrival in the Archive’s inbox of ANOTHER rare sub Branch picture,
this time OTFORD, Kent, which
was once sub to Swanley, then to Sevenoaks. It was opened on 30 June 1928,
and closed again in 1936.
We are
indebted to ED THOMPSON, whose collection of old photos of that part of Kent
was swelled earlier this years by the receipt of 3000 glass plate
images. The photo shows the building
used by the bank, and just as was the case with Dalston, a member of staff is
standing outside.
We believe
that he may well be Mr C W Cottell who is listed as Manager of Swanley in the
Bank’s Annual Report and Accounts for 1929, which were published early in
1930. It is also believed that the image was taken in 1930. It would seem that 2019 has been the year
of “discoveries”, as what might be the only image in existence of Chislehurst
High Street was also found and a copy donated to us a few months ago. Ed Thompson also supplied us with other
items, including a contemporary image of Otford sub Branch, which, it turns
out, was a great thing to do as the future of the building is currently in
doubt, and it might be knocked down.
There was also a scan from some title deed documents which show a
conveyance of land to Martins Bank on 16 April 1928, a couple of months
before the office was opened for business.
One thing leads to another…
 No sooner had
we published a special newsletter celebrating those who have contributed
items, stories and memories to the Archive, than an enquiry came in from one
of our regular visitors which lead to this extremely precious image being
unearthed and a copy donated to us. In
what was more like a game of “consequences” an original query snowballed into
e-mails to and from the other side of the World. It all began with one from Derek Longden,
who has been a keen supporter of our archive for many years now, and it all
comes down to his love of reading autobiographies. In fact a few years ago he was reading
about the life of Former MP Teresa Gorman, and was interested to note that it
was Martins Bank’s Branch at Streatham which had granted her the finance she
needed to get her business off the ground in the late 1960s, (whilst some
other banks were just not interested)!
Recently Derek has been reading the autobiography of author,
journalist and broadcaster, Hunter Davies OBE. Mr Davies spent much of his youth in the
Carlisle area, where one of his contemporaries was Ian Johnstone, son of Mr J
A P Johnstone one of Martins Bank’s most respected Managers in Carlisle. In the early 1960s, Ian Johnstone
emigrated to New Zealand where today he is one of that country’s most
respected broadcasters. In the pages of Hunter Davies’ autobiography,
reference is made to Ian’s father being Manager of Martins sub Branch at
STANWIX – this is the first time we have come across mention of this office,
apart from within official Martins Bank records. We contacted the publisher
of the autobiography to ask if we might quote the relevant passage, and they
very kindly agreed to it appearing on our STANWIX
page.
At the same
time we contacted Radio New Zealand International to ask if Ian had any
photographs from his father’s time with Martins Bank. When the reply came, it was not from New
Zealand, but Alberta CANADA, where another of Mr J A P Johnstone’s sons,
Andrew lives. Amongst several photographs of his father, was the image of him
standing outside a sub branch of the Bank of Liverpool and Martins. The carving above the door reads “WHIN
VIEW” and a quick search on Google® revealed Whin View to be a house in DALSTON, also near Carlisle. The current owner, Ken Johnson kindly sent
us an image of his house as it is today, which we have put alongside the
original photo for comparison.
By now you
might need to pause for breath, but to summarise the situation would be to
say that we are now in the happy position of having confirmation of the
existence of TWO former sub Branches of the Bank, both of which were closed
many years before the merger of Martins and Barclays. The photograph of
Dalston is likely to be the only one in existence, and had it not been for
Derek Longden’s original email in reference to another Carlisle sub Branch,
this curious trip around the World would not have happened!
A special “contributors” edition of our newsletter, out now…
The scanning
and sorting of staff records data for the Martins Staff Database has taken
around ten years to complete, and that  is only stage
one! In connection with this digital version of records previously in print
form and in the public domain for more than forty years, we have been in
contact with a number of Martins’ staff members, or their families to
“straighten out” the odd anomaly here and there. This has in turn produced
contributions to the Archive of stories, photgraphs and other items. Our Summer newsletter is devoted to these
people and the efforts they have made to enrich the history of the modern day
Martins Bank – i.e. that which is still within the memory of many people
today. You can select to read the
newsletter by clicking on the image (left) and don’t forget that previous
issues are available at the top of this page.
We find out how one man’s National Service led to him regularly
meeting members of the Royal Family.
There is a curious box, beautifully made, and with the Martins bank
shield and name on it. Rare glimpses
of staff at work at the bank counter are also featured, and some of our
regular contributors show us the changing faces of some of the Bank’s former
branches.
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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.
· ß To order a
commemorative tie or scarf, please download the order form by clicking on
the image to the left…
· à To read the updated
“fable” of the eagle and the grasshopper, please click on the poster on the
right…
· To register your
interest in the dinners, contact Dave Baldwin, Secretary Grasshopper
Pensioners’ Club: grasshoppers@btinternet.com
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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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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 Miss B R Wilcockson, Clerk in charge at Pudsey during world War Two.
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, Tuesday 1ST October 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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