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A bit of a “re-shuffle”…
Changes to the town
centre make this necessary, and no expense is spared in providing a new and
ultra-modern Branch for Gateshead.
The new premises are designed to last, and the Branch is still open
today. |
In Service: 9 May 1960 until 1
July 2022
All Branch Images © Barclays Ref 0030/1048
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The new Branch throws
open its doors for the first time on the morning of Monday 9 May 1960, and a
full page article appears in the Newcastle Journal, which provides a very
detailed appraisal of the Branch, its staff, and some of the history of the
Bank. We are most grateful to our friends at The Journal - Today’s Voice of
the North – for allowing the story to be reproduced below. |
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© THE
JOURNAL 9 MAY 1960
by Sidney Sterck
For
centuries, the banks in this country have so smoothed out the pattern of
business transactions that it is difficult to imagine what life in our
islands would be like if we suddenly became "bank-less." Bankrupt? Bewitched, bothered, and bewildered? Try to
work it out. In the meantime, thank the
banks for acting as a perfect go-between, linking borrower with lender,
producer with consumer, wholesaler with retailer, rich man with poor man… The
flow of money would, indeed, become highly erratic if the banks were not with
us. One bank that has been with us for a
long time is Martins. It started as the Bank of Liverpool more than 125 years
ago, but its roots lie much deeper in time than that, as the old private
concern —
Martins Bank, London — dates to 1563. Still on the
Bank's coat of arms is the grasshopper emblem which Sir Thomas Gresham, the
famous Elizabethan financier, displayed outside his house in Lombard Street,
where the principal London office of Martins Bank now stands. In the course of its growth, Martins has
absorbed or amalgamated with more than 30 smaller banks, many of them family
concerns, and today sees the outcome of a further amalgamation, though one of
a somewhat differing nature. The changing
face of Gateshead High Street brought about by the Corporation's development
schemes, made it necessary, for the bank to fuse two Branches in that
thoroughfare, and replace them with a new building.
CAR PARK, TOO Gone
are the Branches at 86 and 338 High Street, and in their place
is an imposing structure bearing the number 215 which like its predecessors,
stays at the heart of business life of the community. Customers from the Branches now closed will see much that
is new, but a lot that is familiar to them, for most of the staffs of the
defunct Branches, including the two managers, have gone over. This new Branch of Martins conforms to the modern
"banking in comfort" trend. There is a comfortable waiting room for
clients, and—perhaps
of greater importance — car parking facilities in a yard at the rear. The
businessman will be able to drive in, and enter the Branch through a
rear-access door.
COLOURFUL
The
building is steel framed with reinforced concrete floors and
roof. Green marble from northern Italy has been used for the ground floor
facade, while the upper floors have yellow facing bricks. Doors and windows to the main
facade are in polished teak, and the windows and mullions behind the entrance
doors are of anodised aluminium. In the banking hall is an illuminated ceiling made of panels suspended
below the steelwork. Here, the main wall is finished with wood panelling,
while the two entrances are clad with Roman stone —
a creamy-brown marble. Sand-blasted
glass screens in anodised aluminium frames have been fitted to counters and
desks, and the space in front of the counters has been finished in grey and
green ceramic mosaic tiles.
In the Manager’s
room, one wall is panelled out in elm to give a
fitted wardrobe, bookcase and films cupboard, and the floor is close-covered
with a dark grey carpet. The heating of the whole of the ground floor is by low-temperature
radiation, the electric cables being embedded in the concrete floors. Full advantage has been taken
of the thermal storage characteristics of the building materials., "off-peak"
electricity tariffs being used to build up a store of heat in the floor slab
overnight for release during the day.
MEN IN CHARGE
In charge of the new Branch
is Mr. E. F. B. Middleton,
who was in control at 86 High Street from 1957. Before that date he was
manager at Low Fell, and earlier still at Hebburn. During his 18 years'
Territorial and active service association with the 5th Battalion, Royal
Northumberland Fusiliers, Mr. Middleton was awarded the M.B.E. and the Territorial
Decoration. Mr G. D. Richardson, who has relinquished control at 338 High
Street, will assist Mr Middleton at the new Branch. A native of South
Shields, he served during the 1939-45 war in the Royal Air Force, partly in
Canada. There is,
too, the Coatsworth Road Branch serving the less concentrated part of
Gateshead. Here, Mr. J. W. Johnson, is manager.
EXPERT
ADVICE
At the high Street Branch, as indeed obtains at the rest of the 600-plus Branches
of Martins Bank throughout England, Wales, the Channel Isles, and the Isle of
Man, customers will be able to draw on a highly-specialised service which
goes far beyond the purely physical
business of banking and withdrawal of money. In addition to acting as
executor or trustee under a will, the bank
acts a trustees for marriage settlements and for public, charitable, and
other institutions and deals with, the administration of trusts of other
highly specialised kinds. People
with income-tax troubles can take their affairs to a special department where
returns for assessments are prepared and repayment claims of all kinds
handled. Expert advice is also offered in other fields. The highly-skilled
and complicated business of financing exports and imports to and from all
parts of the world, for instance, occupies the attention of qualified staffs. ARTICLE © THE JOURNAL 1960.
BRANCH IMAGES © BARCLAYS REF 0030-1048 Special
thanks to Mr G D Richardson, friend of Martins Bank Archive
In 1965, after five
years at the helm of 215 High Street,
it is time for Gateshead Manager Mr Ted Middleton to retire. His farewell party is attended by more than
a hundred guests, and of course, Martins Bank Magazine…
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This gallery covers the
period from approximately 1960 to 1969.
There are of course many
more pictures of Gateshead Staff on the pages for
the various other Branches in the town.
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