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 Grimsby joins
the smattering of Martins Bank’s Branches in Lincolnshire, in September 1966
– another full Branch is opened in the same year at Boston and a sub-Branch
to Lincoln is opened at North Hykeham.
Grimsby will however be the last Branch to fly the flag for Martins in
this part of the Country, as the merger with Barclays is just around the
corner and branch closures will be inevitable. Lincoln and North Hykeham
close in 1969, Grimsby in 1970, leaving Boston and Spalding to continue the
name of Martins. Boston survives until
the end of 1992, and Spalding is still open today.
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In Service: September 1966 to 8 May 1970
Image © Barclays Ref 0030/1127
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Halfway up on the right-hand
side…
As Grimsby Branch is destined to bow out so
early, it is perhaps just as well that not long after the office is opened
for business, Martins Bank Magazine provides a very lengthy and detailed
article about the town, the Branch, and the Staff, and starts by getting to
grips with just what, exactly, Grimsby is for…
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remembering
where Grimsby
is – halfway up on the
right-hand side, for those who do not know - one might reasonably wonder
why the Bank opened a branch there. The nearest sizeable towns are Scunthorpe, a music-hall joke
town booming precariously on steel 30 miles to the west, and Lincoln 36
miles to the south-west. Between these two communities and Grimsby lie the
Lincolnshire Wolds and acres of rich farmland. The signposts guiding one
from the west fail to acknowledge Grimsby's existence until one is 20 miles
from it and even then, its name is linked with the adjoining borough of
Cleethorpes, another music-hall joke town sometimes called
Sheffield-by-the-Sea. These depressing thoughts may have been prompted by a 160-mile
drive in a continuous downpour, but we told ourselves that none of the
great explorers would ever have discovered anything had they turned back
when conditions were unfavourable. The rain eased as we approached Grimsby
which surprised us by its enormity: it has a population of 90,000 and its
adjoining resort and dormitory has 40,000. The second surprise was the
realisation that it is attractive and clean, with many open spaces, modern
buildings, and schools. We began to feel better and when the sun emerged
for half an hour, we actually wondered why we had not come to Grimsby
before. One reason is that to us and to many others Grimsby and fish are
synonymous, the other is that when the east winds blow off the North Sea
across the Humber mouth even brass monkeys would head for warmer climes.
But in September, apart from a diesel locomotive which yahoo-ed outside the
hotel window at intervals throughout the night, Grimsby was most
hospitable.
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Image ©
Martins Bank Archive Collections
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It is a bustling place, but one has to dig beneath the surface
to realise how much it is dependent on the sea and has been since the Danes
settled there a thousand years ago: only when the original haven silted up
in the 16th century did its inhabitants turn to the land for a living. Its
survival provides a remarkable story of religious, political, legal, and
economic skulduggery: laws were made to be broken, those who administered
them were too often on the make, and loyalties were bought and sacrificed.
In 1524 the mayor of the town received a peremptory demand
from 'a gentleman' to deal leniently with a miscreant 'or else ye shall
cause me to put the matter to further knowledge, which I should be sorry to
do, as knoweth our Lord'.
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Forty years later 21
absentees from church, charged with non-attendance, were found to have gone
wildfowling: within a few years the vicar was charged with playing bowls
and football— sports apparently more vicious in those days than bull-and
bearbaiting.
Through all this runs a history of battles with the elements and of
primitive ships trading with far places. It was another gentleman—a railway director—who
raised Grimsby out of the mud and conflict when he persuaded his board to
build a railway, completed in 1848, and to build a dock. By 1851 the
population had doubled to nearly 9,000. Today Grimsby is acknowledged as the
premier fishing port of the world, with the biggest cold storage capacity
in the United Kingdom. Quite apart from a prodigious trade through the
Royal Dock, notably in timber and bacon, the development of the 63-acre
Fish Dock has to be seen before one can appreciate the progress since
orphan 'apprentices' were sent as crew on the earliest steam trawlers. A
modern trawler with freezing equipment costs Ł500,000 so, not
surprisingly, the owners of today are limited companies, but skippers and
crews are handsomely rewarded for what is still a tough and sometimes
hazardous life.
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Image ©
Martins Bank Archive Collections
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Everything from repairs
and the fitting and victualling of the ships to the landing, marketing,
packing, storing and transport of their catch is handled at Grimsby, and
the wealth of the industry is reflected in the shops and the homes. Though
the town lives primarily off, if not on, fish there is no smell in these
days of quick freezing except on the 'pontoon', the long-covered sheds, and
offices where morning sales are conducted through 350 individual firms of
fish merchants.
The town has other
concerns—rubber, chemical and oil interests have been established
along the Humber bank—and this, one might say, is where we came in and why
the Bank came into Grimsby, for Humberside in the future is going to be
quite something. On the north bank is Hull 'at the end of the road to
nowhere' as we wrote some time ago, and to the south are Immingham and
Grimsby with ample room for expansion as far inland as Scunthorpe if necessary. Humberside is something to watch and, with a
return to economic sanity, the question 'why did we open at Grimsby?' could
soon become 'where do we open next?'
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The new branch is all one would expect it to be, strikingly
modern in a part of the town undergoing redevelopment, the outstanding
features being the grey marble counter face and the rear wall of the
banking hall in bold relief Anaglypta. Mr
G. H. D. Smith's recently acquired knowledge of Grimsby's main industry
following his two years as manager in agricultural Selby qualify him as the
ideal 'Manager of Ag. and Fish'. Mr R. Taylor is a native of Doncaster
whose recent Inspection experience and Domestic Training Course make him
an able lieutenant.
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Mrs B. L. Taylor, recently married to a local schoolteacher,
was previously at York Branch for three years and Mr J. Driver, who was in
the recruitment pipeline at the time of our visit, has since joined the
staff. The new office goes one
better than Grimsby in having a display window which, by featuring some
large reproductions of our advertisements, was stopping and trapping
passers-by. Grimsby itself seems content to leave the publicity to
neighbouring Cleethorpes, relying on fringe benefits and on its own
industry which, it perhaps feels, is sufficiently well-known. This seems a
pity, for even though we may not eat fish or take cod liver oil we probably
use Grimsby fish in some form for our gardens, pets, or poultry. At least
by going there we now know more about it and what it does.
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Image © Martins Bank Archive Collections: Stephen Walker
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We could even explain
it to the small child who gazed wonderingly at the television and murmured
'I never knew fish had fingers'.
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