11-90-60 Birkenhead Prenton

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Bank of Liverpool

Prenton Branch is opened by the Bank of Liverpool and Martins in 1909, adding to what will become a portfolio of TWELVE Martins Bank Branches in the Birkenhead area, and many more throughout the Wirral Peninsula.

By 1969 in addition to Prenton, there will be or have been Branches at Borough Road, Charing Cross, Dacre Hill, Claughton Village, Hamilton Square, Higher Tranmere, Lower Bebington, Park, Rock Ferry, Upton and Woodside Lairage. So, wherever a 1960s customer finds themselves in Birkenhead, they will really have NO excuse for banking elsewhere!

In Service: 1909 until 7 April 2000

Monochrome Branch Images © Barclays Ref 0030-0195

This image of the almost childlike Mr J Corner (who does, we admit, remind us a little of Jimmy Clitheroe) is taken in 1948, three years after 1945 Mr J Corner joined the bank here MBM-Wi48P31 he joins the bank. He works hard throughout the 1950s for various Head Office Departments including Staff Department, is appointed Clerk in Charge at Neston in the early sixties, and in 1965 takes over the Managership of Prenton Branch right up to the merger with Barclays in 1969. He is still recognisable from his maturer years image in our Staff Gallery below! Meanwhile Basil Thorington, Prenton’s Manager between 1961 and 1965 (see image below) goes South and East to Manage Norwich London Street. Whilst there he will oversee the building and handing over to Barclays of Martins Bank’s last Branch new Branch to be opened in the name of Martins at EATON which opens in May 1969…

By 2011, this once beautiful bank branch had been transformed almost out of recognition, as we can see in the contemporary photograph taken by Robert Montgomery.