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Washington
CD…
If we were to add perhaps a cash machine, then a shop front
like this would certainly not look out of place on today’s High Street,
although the total floor space required would probably be halved! |
In Service: Thursday 15
July 1965 until 12 December 1969
Branch
Images © Barclays Ref 0030-3084
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Whilst the office is
streamlined, and large enough to cope with future expansion, Washington has
the somewhat dubious honour of being one of the many branches that are both
created and killed-off during Martins’ time. It enjoys just four years
of service before the doors are closed forever on 12 December 1969. |
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The branch has its own Clerk
in Charge, capable of taking some lending decisions, assisted by a small staff,
possibly one or two others who serve the customers and take care of the
processing and dispatch of the days work.
Washington is also open full banking hours, and is lucky enough to
have avoided the ubiquitous impersonal bandit screens of the late 1960s. Barclays has its own Branch in
Victoria Road Washington, and when the two banks merge at the end of 1969,
the Martins office is closed and the business transferred over.
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Spot the difference!
Preparing for the opening of
a brand new branch of the Bank is a serious business, from the initial
purchase of a prime site, through the maze of design and construction to the
point when you actually let people know the new service is about to arrive,
and/or is is open for business. There might well have been some embarrassment
in the Advertising Department of Martins Bank, when on the opening day of the
new Washington Sub Branch, an advertisement was placed in the local press,
which displayed the WRONG
address! Just under a week
later, a second advertisement is placed, which reminds customers that the
branch is now open for business, AND which also, thankfully,
displays the correct address. This was of course the time that Martins
Bank’s most famous campaign slogan was first used - “Martins go to extremes
to be helpful”. Apart from this single
“hiccup” at Washington, we have yet to find anything else which would
disprove such a noble statement of intent!
Images © Martins Bank Archive
Collections Advertisments re-mastered 2018 |
15 July 1965 |
21 July 1965 |
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