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MARTINS BANK
TIMELINE – 1918 ONWARDS… |
On this page we chart some of the history of the modern day Martins
Bank through events and milestones that took place after the 1918
amalgamation of the Bank of Liverpool with Martin’s Private Bank. Much of the Twentieth Century sees exponential growth in branch banking in the
United Kingdom, but the final decade begins to reveal the inevitable results
of fifty years of computerisation, starting with the centralisation of back
office functions, massive reductions in the numbers of those employed, and by
the second decade of the twenty-first centry, the closure of the majority of
bank branches. At least one generation
of older customers is cut adrift by a sophisticated campaign, the result of
which – whether or not intended – forces customers to use the internet to do
their banking, allowing high street banks to close thousands of branches with
the legitimate excuse that “customers simply don’t use them any more”. That everything in twenty-first century
banking seems mired in scandal and the culture of blame, hides unfairly the
pioneering efforts of banks such as Martins to promote high quality service as the most desirable aspect of having a
bank account. It would appear that the rush to sell “products” to customers
from the mid 1980s to the early 2000s may not have been the pot of gold that
many banks thought it might be.
Hindsight is of course one of those useless commodities, the best we
can expect from it is that we might learn from what has already happened… |
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1918 |
North and South combine, and an apostrophe is
dropped… |
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A banking service of one kind or another has been
offered on the site of 68 Lombard Street since 1563, when Sir Thomas Gresham
is said to have traded “at the sign of the grasshopper”. By 1918 on this site, Martin’s Private Bank
has its London Head Office and there are fourteen branches dotted mainly
around the Kentish/London border. Under the Chairmanship of Edward Norman,
Martin’s Private Bank is acquired by the
Bank of Liverpool and renamed the Bank of Liverpool and Martins. |
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1928 |
The modern day Martins Bank |
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The incorporation of the Lancashire and Yorkshire
Bank leads to the shortening of the title to Martins Bank Limited. The new Bank has several hundred branches
and is easily big enough to take on the London Banks, and resist further
amalgamations. Martins Bank goes
against the grain by successfully keeping its Head Office in Liverpool.
Martins Bank’s Coat of Arms shows the Grasshopper of Martin’s Private Bank
over the Liver Bird of the Bank of Liverpool… |
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1929 |
Shows and Exhibitions |
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The North East coast Exhibition of 1929 is one of
the first opportunities for the new Martins Bank to make its presence
felt. A stand at the show is rented
from May to October in the “Palace of Industries”. Even contactable by
telephone, the stand runs as a mini Branch of the Bank and thereafter Martins
cannot resist taking part in everything from the Annual ideal Homes
Exhibition at Olympia, to the British Industries Fair, and the Shoe Trades
Exhibition. The Bank’s lavish stands
often win prizes. |
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1930 |
The Grasshopper is rebuilt |
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68 Lombard Street – the site of the original
“Grasshopper” – is demolished and rebuilt to accommodate the expanding
business of Martins Bank in London.
Lombard Street is amongst the Capital’s narrower thoroughfares, and
one of the best photographed images of this building is only achieved when
one of the buildings opposite has to be demolished, and the photographer is
able to move far enough away to be able to capture the entire frontage! By
1932 both Liverpool and London have purpose built premises to see Martins
Bank through a new phase in the history of Banking which will include the
arrival of mobile branches, computers, drive-in branches, cash machines, and
decimal currency… |
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1932 |
A new Head Office |
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No 4 Water Street Liverpool, the new Head Office
of Martins Bank Limited is opened. The
building is a lavish affair themed around Liverpool’s maritime
connections. With three floors below
ground, and eight above, customers and staff travel in high speed lifts
situated in beautifully decorated rotundas at the front of the building. The “horseshoe” counter is stunning, and
along with the main building, has listed status in the twenty-first century.
Innovative heating and lighting systems make the building firmly ahead of its
time, and its cathedral like banking hall provides a backdrop for film makers
into the twenty-first century… |
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1938 |
Anyone for
money? |
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A sub-Branch is opened at the prestigious All England
Lawn Tennis Club, on Wimbledon’s Centre Court. Who knows how many World famous tennis
stars will be served with cash by the staff seconded from Wimbledon High Street
Branch? Hours of business run from 12 noon until close of play, so staff must
expect a few eight hour shifts during the two weeks of the annual
tournament. The prize of a sub-Branch
on Centre Court will be game, set, and match for Barclays when it takes over
in 1969… |
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1940 |
A golden opportunity |
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The new Head Office Building is put to the test
in 1940, when in May, a large part of Britain’s reserves of gold are brought
to Liverpool and stored in the vaults of the Bank. The Bank of England recognises that Martins
Bank has one of the most sophisticated and impregnable safes in the country,
and once the gold has been removed and shipped from Liverpool to Canada, the
governor of the Bank of England extends his thanks and glowing praise to
Martins for their “national service”… |
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1941 |
Keep Calm, and Carry On |
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Exeter Branch is destroyed in the famous
Baedecker Air Raid in April 1941. It is one of a number of casualties
suffered by the Bank around the Country during the Second World War – 32
Lowndes Street London, 19 South John Street Liverpool, and Manchester Corn
Exchange are amongst those destroyed by enemy action. Meanwhile an “army” of female members of
staff is temporarily promoted to run Branches and sub-Branches whilst the
male staff are away fighting in the Second World War. Many of these women take on the
responsibilities of Clerk in Charge, and maintain the vital service of
providing cash for local people and businesses in the days when a bank was
almost the only way to obtain it. Between 1939 and 1946, many more branches
are closed either for the duration of hostilities, or permanently. |
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1948 |
Martins Bank goes on the road |
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Martins Bank launches a mobile banking service in a
specially converted caravan which makes its debut during “Thrift Week”. Despite being iron framed and needing a
large vehicle to tow them, the mobile branches are quite versatile and
remarkably useful: They also stand in for branches that are being built or
rebuilt. In the 1950s they bring
banking to ordinary people on housing estates. By the late 1960s, a fleet of
six caravans attends more than 80 annual agricultural shows and other events
around the country, promoting the services of the Bank. The vans are given a
makeover by Barclays and used briefly in the early 1970s, but we had to wait
nearly forty years before the “bank on wheels” came back into regular use… |
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1951 |
Banking from Dover to Calais |
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Martins Bank’s Business is enhanced by the
acquisition of the British Mutual Bank, which has two branches in London and
operates a special banking service on board the UK’s first Cross-Channel
Ferry. Customers can only be served whilst the ship is moving through the
English Channel. In the early days
just one cashier has sole responsibility for all the cash, and the
balancing of the books in several currencies! The Cross-Channel Bank operates
until the early 1980s, when newer ways of spending money abroad, such as
debit cards and an internationally available network of cash machines lessens
the popularity of, and the need for the changing Sterling for foreign
currencies and travellers’ cheques… |
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1955 |
An agricultural legacy |
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Finance for Farmers and Growers is a unique
collaboration between Martins Bank and the ministry of Agriculture. It is published in 1955 shortly after food
rationing in the UK is abolished. This annual summary of trends in farming,
and the ways in which it can be financed, is an immediate hit, and continues
to be produced by Barclays until the late 1980s. Published for more than thirty years,
Finance for Farmers and Growers now provides us with a detailed historical
record of the changing face of farming in Britain. |
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1958 |
Banking on the Student Pound |
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Martins Bank opens a branch at Liverpool University,
to look after the finances of the lawyers, doctors and teachers of tomorrow.
For the next forty years, competition amongst banks for the student market
will reach fever pitch as they try to out-do each other with larger and
better incentives and giveaways in order to secure new accounts. Martins opens branches at ten University
sites, losing many of them at the time of the merger with Barclays in 1969… |
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1958 |
Are you being served? |
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Martins Bank acquires Lewis’s Bank Limited, a unique
banking enterprise for its size, with branches inside department stores. This briefly provides Martins Bank with its
first (and only) branch in Scotland.
Lewis’s Bank opens all day Saturday, and runs a dedicated children’s
counter in each of its department store branches to encourage thrift in the
young. Martins Bank owns Lewis’s for
nine years, before selling it on to Lloyds Bank in 1967. For many years Lewis’s Bank has a branch at
the top London department store Selfridges, because Lewis’s Stores actually owns
Selfridges during that time. |
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1959 |
Bringing the Bank to the workplace |
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One of Martins Bank’s first modern “workplace”
Branches opens at the I C I Wilton Works at Middlesbrough. Over the next ten years, branches for the
use of company employees will open at a number of sites around England,
including a hospital in Liverpool, two RAF Stations in the North East, a Paper Mill in Kent, and the scarily
futuristic gas research station at Killingworth, Northumberland. The
sub-Branch at Wilton Works remains open for FORTY years… Several years later, at the British Wool Marketing
Board in Kew, Surrey, banking in the workplace is one of a number of
initiatives used by Martins Bank to dispel the myth that bank accounts are
only for the rich… |
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1959 |
The Leicester Drive-In Bank |
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Charles Street – Martins Bank’s second branch in the City
of Leicester – includes a new drive-in banking service which is opened by the
Minister for Transport, Harold Watkinson. The drive-in becomes one of the
most photographed of the Bank’s innovations, but there is controversy on day
one when young attractive models are used in place of local staff in some of
the publicity shots. Despite drive-in banking never really taking off in
Britain, the Martins Drive-in Branch at Leicester is kept on by Barclays, and
operates for nearly thirty years… |
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1960 |
The digital revolution begins |
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Martins Bank becomes the first Bank in the UK to
successfully demonstrate the day to day processing of its customers’ current
accounts using an electronic computer. Trials of the british made “Pegasus”
Computer are run in Liverpool and London, and extensive research into
marrying together the processes of the Branch Counters and the Back office is
undertaken by Martins’ Head of Organisation research and Development, Ron
Hindle, who visits the USA and Sweden in search of the expertise and
equipment that will deliver computerised banking. Originally the size of a room, the Pegasus
computer can process the details of 30,000 accounts, yet its memory capacity
is less than you might find today in some children’s toys. |
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1963 |
Four Centuries of Banking |
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The business originally founded “at the sign of
the Grasshopper” the principal
London office of Martins Bank celebrates its Four Hundredth Anniversary. Martins Bank publishes part one of its
“autobiography” – Four Centuries of Banking – which charts the Bank’s
activities and key personnel back to 1563. Martins Bank does not simply look
back at its history, it is also working hard on the future, and the Clearing
Department at Lombard Street has just been equipped with an IBM Reader-Sorter
Machine, capable of handling nearly 1000 cheques per minute… |
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1963 |
Beryl at the helm |
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Beryl Evans becomes Martins Bank’s first female
appointed member of staff. She takes
on the role of Assistant Manager of the Bank’s Advertising Department. Beryl has been involved in all aspects of
Head Office life, and has also taken part in, or planned most staff social
events since the late 1940s. She leads by example, turning her hand to just
about anything to help maintain the success of the Bank. Under her leadership
the advertising department takes a much needed and radical step away from the
staid and boring, and embraces the surreal and swinging 60s head on. |
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1965 |
The only way is up |
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At 23 St James’s Street, London, the former British Mutual
Bank Branch is demolished and rebuilt for a modern age. The new building
becomes Martins Bank’s first “escalator Branch”, where all services are
accessed by first travelling to the upper floors by escalator. St James’
Street is amongst the most modern of the Bank’s Branches, and Martins’ use of
top designers, architects and craftsmen produces new branches and rebuilds
that are often a radical departure from the stuffiness and claustrophobia of
many of the older style bank branches.
St James’s Street Branch is retained by Barclays and stays in service
until 1995… |
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1966 |
Joined up banking |
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The London Computer Centre is completed at
Bucklersbury House, Walbrook, London, and runs a Martins designed branch
accounting program that will last into the twenty-first century. A partnership with N C R sees the Bank’s
first real steps towards computerising its Branch network. This is partly achieved with a system
linking more than 30 branches in the London area, and experiments with data
transmission between London and Liverpool are well advanced by the time of
the merger with Barclays. When
Bucklersbury House is demolished in 2011, all trace of the London Computer
Centre is lost to history. Martins’ original plans for a new computer centre
at Wythenshawe, Manchester, are however taken on and expanded by Barclays… |
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1966 |
Working with Animals and children |
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The Bank’s advertising takes on the services of a small girl, and variety
of animals - an elephant, a camel, a zebra a hippo and some cows in order to
appeal to the full range of potential customers! The elephant advertisement in particular,
is so popular that a Yorkshire Zoo re-creates it by taking one of its own
elephants and a small girl into York Branch to open an account. From now
until the merger with Barclays, Martins Advertising will be striking and
innovtive, but always just a little tongue-in-cheek… |
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1966 |
The Epsom Drive-In Bank |
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Martins Bank opens a second drive-in Branch at Epsom,
Surrey, serving what the Bank refers to as “the gin and Jaguar belt”. Epsom Branch is opened in a former police
station, and stands in its own grounds with ample space for a drive-in
window. The branch is built at the
insistence of one of Martins Bank’s Directors, whose wife has expressed
embarrassment at not having a local Branch of the bank at which to cash her
cheques! The Epsom drive-in remains
open until 1979, with the branch itself closing a couple of years later. |
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1967 |
The Grasshopper and the Unicorn |
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The Unicorn brand
is originally partly the creation of Sir Edward DuCann MP, whose “Unicorn
Securities” Company is re-branded Martins Unicorn, in 1967. Martins Bank acquires Unicorn Unit Trusts,
which along with the profitable Martins Bank Trust Company branches around
the country, will provide lucrative income opportunities for Barclays for
decades to come. Martins Unicorn is
the subject of the Bank’s one and only television advertisement, which airs
in three regions of the newly reshuffled ITV network in October 1968. |
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1967 |
Money round the
clock |
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Martins Bank unveils
the first cash dispenser in the North of England at Liverpool, Church Street
Branch, in October 1967. Although
Barclays opens the World’s first cash dispenser in Enfield, Middlesex some
five months earlier, it requires the use of paper vouchers and a six digit
personal code number. Martins
Auto-Cashier is the first dispenser of its type in the World to use the
combination personal identification number (PIN) and a plastic card that we
know today. At first these machines
operate on the principle of pre-payment, something which has come back into
fashion in the twenty-first Century, through prepaid debit cards. Manufactured by the CHUBB Safe and Lock
Company, the second generation of this machine wins a Prince Philip
Design Award in 1969. |
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1968 |
The shock of the
new |
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Martins Bank’s original Branch at 88 Wigmore Street
London is closed, and the business moves to a futuristic building at No 95
designed by Ernö Goldfinger, who is well known for visiting his dystopian
visions upon UK towns and cities. The
strange arrangement of blocks on the right is actually the window of the
Manager’s office (seen here from the inside), a positive RIOT of colourful glass. |
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1968 |
The beginning of
the end |
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By Special Act of
Parliament, Martins Bank Limited and Barclays Bank Limited are merged. Despite reassurances by Martins’ Management
to their staff, it seems the name of Martins will not live on. - The
name of the business will be Barclays Bank Limited, and the words “Martins
Branch” will appear on the cheques of some former Martins customers, and on
other items of stationery. The merger
of the main business is all but complete on 1 November 1968. The date for the
full incorporation of the branches themselves is set by the Act of Parliament
as 15 December 1969. |
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1982 |
Getting closer to
the end |
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Barclays Bank
Limited becomes Barclays Bank plc, and the words “Martins Branch” disappear
forever from customer stationery. The
“plc” stands for Public Limited Company, and at first companies choose either
upper or lower case letters to show the acronym on their stationery… |
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2008 |
The end of the end |
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Some thirty-nine
years after merging with Barclays, Martins Bank Limited is finally wound up
in the records of Companies House. The
name cannot now be reused to trade with, by anyone, unless they are
recognised and licensed AS A BANK by Companies House. This should safeguard the name of Martins,
but given the twenty-first century fashion for resurrecting the names of
defunct banks to create new brand loyalties, who knows if Martins Bank will
make a reappearance on the high street? |
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2009 |
Bringing Martins
Bank back to life |
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Martins Bank
Archive is established; an online and physical archive dedicated to
preserving the memory of the Bank.
Started in 1989 as a collection of memorabilia, the Archive makes
itself available as online exhibits for the interest of anyone who can access
the internet. Run in collaboration
with, and the guidance of Barclays, the Archive is NOT part of the
Barclays Group of Companies. |
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2013 |
Looking back with
pride |
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Celebrating four
hundred and fifty years since a banking service first began on the site of 68
Lombard Street London, more than one hundred and fifty Martins Staff gather
to celebrate at London’s Royal Overseas League. A commemorative tie is
produced to mark this milestone anniversary, and nearly three hundred are
sold, showing the affection with which Martins Bank is still held by its
former employees and customers. |
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2017 |
50 Years of Cash |
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Whilst a number of
banks can claim to be instrumental in the introduction to the World of the
“hole in the wall”, the honour of being first rests with Barclays by exactly
eighteen weeks. Like so many other originally simple ideas, the notion of
using a bank when it was closed was irresistible, and sparked a race, which
fifty years on leaves us with a device that is taken for granted and used all
over the World millions of times each day.
Martins Bank was never one for resting on its laurels, and like
Barclays, it enjoyed being “first” with many banking ideas and technologies.
Following hot on the heels of Barclays’
“Barclaycash” machine (27 Jun 1967), Martins Auto Cashier (31 Oct
1967), the first type of cash machine to use a plastic card, was unveiled as
the first cash dispenser in the North of England. |
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2018 |
Merged for 50 Years… |
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Martins becomes
part of the Barclays Group in November 1968. Much of 1969 is spent
amalgamting services and back office systems before branches themselves can
operate at part of the new Bank. Fifty years on from the merger of Martins
and Barclays Banks, there remain fewer than one hundred of the seven hundred
Martins branches that were absorbed on 15 December 1969. Computerisation,
which Martins was first to embrace in the late 1950s has now taken over so
much that was achieved in branches by human staff or customers themselves,
that the entire banking network is now contracting at a rate nobody could
have imagined just a few decades ago… |
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