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The Carlisle and Cumberland
Bank opens a banking service at Newbiggin on Lune in 1898. It was probably started as an agency of the
Bank, where a small front room outlet like this would typically offer a
service for just an hour or two on one day of the week – quite an occasion
for the local people and traders, but a very brisk business for a bank.
Despite this, Martins takes on huge numbers of these |
In Service: 1898 until 29 December 1970
Images © Barclays Ref
0033-0399
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Sadly, Newbiggin on Lune is
not one of them, and it survives for just one year under Barclays before
being closed forever. News of the merger is brought to customers all over
England and Wales, by signs like the one in the photograph. They appear
outsie every one of Martins Bank’s branches to tell everyone that soon there
will be a new name over the door. Despite
a promise that the name of Martins will “live on for as long as customers
want it to”, the changeover is swift, and the memory of Martins is consigned
to certain bank stationery – mostly customers’ cheques - until the early
1980s when, due partly to the introduction of “PLC”
to British company names, it disappears altogether. A huge number of front room sub branches
are closed as inefficient or surplus to requirements, and with that, the end
of the golden age of village banking is sounded…
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