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 Martins Bank’s Branch at 9a Whiteladies Road opens a year after the
start of the Second World War. Seen
above in the 1940s, the building is charming and like many of the Bank’s
Branches it enjoys a corner aspect.
Thanks to the work of our friends at the British Newspaper Archive, we
are now able to bring you a variety of Branch opening announcements and
advertisement from the 1920s up to the 1950s.
This particular advertisement appears in the Western Daily Press on18
March 1940, announcing the opening of the new Branch. Clifton is handy too, for employees of the
BBC whose Western Regional Service on 276 metres broadcasts from a studio
just down the road at 21/23 Whiteladies Road, so who knows which famous
broadcasters might have popped in to cash a cheque from time to time? The
South Western District of Martins Bank is the newest (and therefore most
short-lived) of its business regions. What
is lost in that sense is more than made up for by a flurry of activity
in the South West in the mid to late 60s, which sees a programme of rapid
expansion, with many new Branches, and the refurbishment or complete
rebuilding of others.
Newspaper
Image © Northcliffe Media Limited Image created courtesy of THE BRITISH
LIBRARY BOARD Image reproduced with kind permission of
The
British Newspaper Archive
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In Service: 10 March 1940 until 9 February 1979
Image © Barclays Ref:
0030-0428
The South West certainly
does intend to go out with a bang…
Then of course, 1960s architecture and building policy arrives,
sparking change (and raised eyebrows to this day) across the UK, and the refurbishment of Martins’ Bristol Clifton office in 1968 becomes
another prize for Barclays – a similar “Branch on a plate” arrangement to
Martins’ Branch at EATON, Norwich. The makeover means
that this bright and shiny new office is ready for the seventies…
Branch Images © Barclays Ref: 0030-0428
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Images © Barclays
Ref: 0033-0104
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Clifton, along with the Branches of the
Bank that have been rebuilt and/or redesigned at CHELTENHAM and GLOUCESTER, benefits from Martins’ policy of commissioning new artworks,
designed to reflect local life or history. All three receive newly
designed pieces by the ceramic artist Philippa Threlfall, by whose kind
permission this colour photo is shown.
The ceramic mural represents the history and trade links of the
City of Bristol. The fate of
Philippa Threlfall’s artworks for Martins Bank remains something of a
mystery, and there is an appeal from Philippa in our MOST
WANTED section. Since the merger with Barclays, many of
the commissioned artworks have vanished, including countless
representations of the Grasshopper, and an intricate tapestry that went
to the USA as a guest museum exhibit, but never made it home again!
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 In this part of a branch network page, we usually
compare a Martins Branch photograph with a contemporary snap, in order to
highlight the changes that the passage of several decades have witnessed on
a building.
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Occasionally however, we compare photographs that are NOT quite so far apart on the timeline. Although we have already seen these
images earlier on this page, this is the chance to put them side by side to
show how a little alteration can make a1940s branch look just a little newer
and slightly more relevant to the clean lines and designs of the1960s…
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Image © Barclays
Ref: 0030-0428
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