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We are delighted to have located an image of Martins Bank’s Branch at
St James’s Street Burnley. A number of
former staff from the Craven District have been waiting patiently, hoping
that we could, and on this occasion, we must thank our good friends at the
Frith Collection® who came up trumps with an atmospheric and busy shot from
around 1955, about eight years before the Branch is closed and relocated to MANCHESTER ROAD. St James’s
Street and 13 Hargreaves Street Branches are both closed down at Whitsuntide
1963 and the combined business is moved to purpose-built premises on the site
of an old cinema in Manchester Road. |
In Service: Pre 1928 until 31 May 1963 Image © Frith Collection®
c.1955 Ref B251024 and used here under licence. |
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This story is told in full on the page for Manchester Road, but here
is an extract which puts into context the magnitude of moving two branches
into one… Most
people will remember Whitsuntide, 1963 as a week-end of blazing sunshine
spent by the sea, or on the hills, or golfing, or just sitting in the sun.
The staff of the two Burnley branches will remember it as a week-end of
evacuation and invasion, Dunkirk and D-Day rolled into a lost week-end—the
evacuation of Hargreaves Street and St James Street into the new Manchester
Road premises. The exercise had been planned with the precision of a military
operation but, as so often is the case with military operations, the strength
of the enemy was miscalculated and on this occasion the enemy was time. For months we had watched the site
for the new branch being cleared and had nostalgically recalled the old
Savoy Cinema, where we saw the first 'talkie' and where in the cafe we used
to meet our girl on Saturday evening and where one could gossip over a coffee
and chocolate biscuit with a group of friends until 10.30 at a cost of 6d per
head. We had watched the excavations for the strong room and during the
appalling winter had seen the same excavations so deep in water that it was
suggested we were to open the first Dive-in Bank: as the opening day drew
nearer we had realised it was going to be a close touch… In our Staff Gallery below, the staff you see have all been listed as having
worked at “Burnley Branch” and it may well be that some of them worked at
either St James’s Street or 13 Hargreaves Street. We will probably need to rely on the
memories of former Staff to be able to put everyone in the right place!
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