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At the time of Martins Bank Magazine’s visit
to the Bank’s four Bootle branches in 1964, 325 Derby Road - the first of the four to have been opened
by the Bank of Liverpool in 1884 – is still a full branch. The remaining Bootle Branches were opened
in this order: 211 Stanley Road , then Linacre, and finally 99 Stanley Road.
We have divided the magazine article into four parts, in order to provide information
about each od these branches, within their own pages of the Online
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In Service: 1 May 1884 until 25 November 1983 Image © Barclays Ref
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Bootle has docks along its entire waterfront:
behind, it has warehouses, timber
yards, sidings, smoke and a great big smile. It has a General
Hospital, parks, dingy streets, wide thoroughfares, pubs galore, an Art
Gallery, and a Technical College where some of our best girls come from. Bootle
does everything for ships, besides making bread and metal windows, cattle
food and cables, pick-up balers and paint. It dyes clothes, tans leather and
has a Merseyside accent. For a long time Bootle was to Merseyside what Wigan Pier and
mothers-in-law were to stage comics. But by the end of the 1941 blitz 8,000
of Bootle's 17,000 houses were destroyed or badly damaged and a further 8,000
suffered in some way. 20,000 people were made homeless, another 20,000 were
evacuated in 3˝ hours, and over 2,000 were killed or injured; acres of
property were laid waste, the main roads were blocked and all services were
severed. People who remember these things don't laugh at Bootle any more— they laugh with it, for Bootle is quite
happy to laugh at itself. If you mention that an 18th
century writer described Bootle as 'a wild place and roads execrable' your
local man will reply 'What's wrong wit der roads? A bit crowded. But dere arl
right!' And if you should recall that
early in the 19th century Bootle was a fashionable resort 'with sands hard
and smooth, the wind cool and refreshing, where old and young, agile and
infirm, plunge together in the sea and exhibit a scene marked with cheerfulness
and simplicity' cold eyes would be fixed on you and with awful finality would
come the blunt statement : 'Well, you've 'ad DAT!' Bootle has been a township since 1868 and the motto on its Coat
of Arms reads Respice, Aspics,
Prospice: 'Reflect on the past, consider the present, provide for the
future'. Bootle seems to be doing all these things. To reflect on the past, the Bank of Liverpool opened its
first Bootle branch at 325 Derby Road on May 1st 1884 and, despite the rather
discouraging but simple statement reproduced above, the branch made a profit
in its second year. Considering the present, Bootle branch stands opposite a
side street leading directly down to the docks and, as an illustration of the
maintenance problems in the area, it was repainted internally eight months
ago and it is now necessary to have the paintwork washed down. Mr A. S. Jopling, the Manager, is the son
of the late Mr W. E. Jopling, the first Staff Manager of the Bank.
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