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Goodbye
“Paris fashions”…
 Bristol is amongst the first of the new wave of British Universities
that opens in the 1960s. The realisation that student business represents the
chance to acquire and keep loyal customers with a large future earnings
potential is enough to put Martins at the forefront of bidding for retail
space on the many campuses that start to appear all over England and
Wales. Most of the photographs on this
page from the Barclays collection of Martins Branch images. This gives us a
rare chance to see a part of Bristol that is changed by the arrival of the
University Branch in 1960. We see the
building as it was before Martins came along, and then the results of its
stunning transformation into a branch of Martins for university students of Bristol.
…hello Student Customers!
Inside,
everything is as you would expect from Martins, including a spacious banking
hall, and a private office in which to discuss those tricky problems such as
how to make your grant money go further!
The Bank issues a number of leaflets and guides to help its customers.
“About a bank account” is a leaflet that can be tailored to any University in
the country, and inside, students are told about banking and the locations of
the many branches of the Bank they can visit in Bristol.
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In Service: 1962 until 18 November 1983
Image © Barclays Ref 0030/0425
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In 1967, Mr P J Randle as the new manager of
Bristol univeristy Branch, becomes a successful import from the staff of LEWIS’S BANK, which Martins Bank sells that same year to Lloyds Bank.
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 J Roussel Ltd of Paris and London and of course Bristol(!)
falls on its sword, and vacates 7 Queens Road to make way for the arrival
of Martins Bank’s latest addition to its portfolio of Student Banking
Branches. We have already seen two different views of the results above,
but below we can see the difference a coat of paint, a quick tidy and some
imposing signs can make! Spacious inside, and thankfully at this point
bandit screens are not fitted. However, the increase in bank raids in the
1960s will bring about the ubiquitous divider between staff and customer
before we know it…
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Images © Barclays Ref
0030-0425
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