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Martins Bank’s Moss Side
branch is inherited from the amalgamation in 1919 of the Palatine Bank with
the bank of Liverpool and Martins. The ethos of the Palatine was simple, to
provide somewhere safe for the small savings of ordinary people. You can read
a little more about this on our BROOKS’S BAR page. The whistle-stop tour of Manchester Branches
by Martins Bank Magazine in 1967 stops once again (and again all too briefly)
at Moss Side. Nevertheless, the following article gives an incredible account
of life in this part of Manchester. PLEASE BE
WARNED: We would ask you to remember
that in the 1960s, attitudes to race and social class are quite different
from those of today…
In this part of Manchester, the
fine old houses of the former gentry have become clubs, flats, and crumbling
dwellings for the mixed population stretching into a sprawl of terraced
streets which spreads to the east and south until halted by Alexandra Park.
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In Service: pre 1919 until 30 April 1973
Image © Barclays Ref:
0033/0367
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 At the centre of all this stands Moss Side Branch
with a beguiling air of quiet respectability. A murder was committed a
quarter of a mile away, and another attempted within 100 yards of the branch.
Indians, Pakistanis, Lebanese, Chinese and West Indians form the bulk of the
population, and the business ethics and personal habits of some do not always
endear themselves to worthy Mancunians. Moss Side Branch is a tough school
for any banker, and those who seek only the more sheltered big branch life
would be well advised to resign if a transfer to 92 Princess Road seems
imminent. On second thoughts they might enjoy a spell there, for life is
never dull. A foreign national did Ł100 worth of damage, trying to drive his
car through the front door, and through lack of experience, the same amount
getting out again. It has been “broken and entered”. It has magnetic
properties for dust and dirt and for strange people whose conception of
banking is borrowing somehow, or anyhow. We must relate the story of the
coloured gentleman who persuaded the bus conductor to allow him to place a
sack of coke beneath the bus stairs: while collecting fares on the upper
deck, the conductor heard laughter from the passengers below and saw through
the back window the coke owner pedalling a bike frantically in order to keep
his property in sight on the journey home. That at least gives some
indication of the need for “an understanding of people” a term accepted
glibly as a “must” for all budding bankers, sometimes with too little
understanding of all the implications. Moss Side branch will be demolished
for road widening, but somebody should write a book about it….
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