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This is a moderately remote and
very beautiful part of the world. We were delighted to hear from Gerry
Caygill, whose job it is in the 1960s to man the front room sub branch at
Warcop each Friday Morning. As Gerry
recalls, thanks to a nearby army training camp, excitement in banking is not
confined to the larger towns…
Exploding
sheep and women in sports cars… |
In Service: 1962 until 18 December 1970
Image © Barclays Ref 0030-3066 |
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I joined
Martins at Appleby in Westmorland from school in December 1959. Memories of
that particular branch were
mixed, suffice it to say that a somewhat ‘Dickensian’ attitude prevailed.
Appleby had a sub branch in the small village of Warcop, just along the A66
before Brough. This was run by myself for a couple of hours each Friday
morning, in the front room of a customer’s cottage. It was a beautiful rural
setting with a stream trickling by over the road. The usual situation - bag of cash, rubber
stamps and a handful of bank credits and debits etc, all transactions entered
on a hand written waste sheet*. They were then added to the parent branch
waste* on return. My venerable taxi driver doubled as the guard and that was
the sum of our security. I don't think that it ever crossed our minds that we
may be robbed. Our customers were a regular bunch and would always enter the
“bank” from the queue outside, one at a time, for privacy. They were mostly
local farmers, the vicar and usually several officers from the nearby G.T.A.
- an army tank training camp in the Pennines, where live ammunition was
fired, despite the fact that flocks of sheep were grazing on the common
fellside land. Inevitably there were casualties, so the War Department would
pay a bounty for every sheep destroyed. The farmers had to produce a
specified piece of a sheep, probably a horn or hoof, in order to qualify for
the payment. It seemed mildly amusing at the time, unless you were a sheep of
course! One day a wealthy local, lady landowner customer, pulled up in brand
new white Jaguar sports car. When I complimented her on the gleaming car she
confessed to being quite miffed at the chauvinistic attitude of the salesman
in the Kendal garage. “Do you know”, she said, “he commented about ladies being
careful when driving high powered sports cars”. “I wouldn't mind”, she said,
“but I've done the Monte Carlo Rally – twice”! Text © Gerry Caygill June 2011
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