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Beauty
and danger…
Arnside is described by the late, great, Alfred Wainwright as
Westmorland’s only seaside resort, but with its infamous dangerous quicksands
and fast rising tides this is definitely one beauty spot to be
respected. Untold numbers of people,
animals, tractors, horse carriages and other unfortunate souls have met a
grizzly end here!
Image © Benjamin Snowden 2004
The Martins Bank sub branch here is opened in 1897 by the Bank of
Liverpool. It survives the change to
Barclays, and remains open until April 2000, having provided banking services
to the village for more than one hundred years. In the 1940s, the branch sits
amidst the hustle and bustle of Arnside’s many shops in these images from a
Valentines® postcard of the period.
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In Service: 1897 until 7 April 2000
Image © Barclays Ref: 0030-0059
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Images © Valentine and successors
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Some Branches of
Martins Bank have a high turnover of staff, but sub-Branches usually enjoy the
services of the same Clerk in Charge for many many years. Mr W H (Bill)
Mashister is one of Arnside’s longer serving Clerks in Charge, and is the
face of the bank to the people of the village for thirteen years – 1953 to
1966. Upon his retirement, Martins
Bank Magazine prints the following
tribute…
Mr W. H. Mashiter
  on august 31 Mr and Mrs Mashiter entertained past and present colleagues
to a sherry party at Kendal branch on his retirement after 14 years as
Clerk-in-Charge at Arnside. The major part of his 42 years' service had
been spent in the Kendal area after 4 years in Liverpool. Mr Mashiter had
lunched with the District General Manager in Liverpool during the previous
week.
Mr C. Clark (Manager, Kendal)
confessed that a similar record of service had been his boyhood dream of
the best job in the Bank but that Mr Mashiter had greatly increased the
Arnside business and, with his wife, entered fully into the local
activities in which he held seven treasurerships. He mentioned Bill
Mashiter's prowess as a county rugby player and later as a golfer: only a
fortnight earlier he had achieved his first hole-in-one. On behalf of many
colleagues Mr Clark then presented a cheque which Mr Mashiter promptly
handed to his wife whose help he had so greatly valued in his happy years
at Arnside. Mrs Mashiter also received a bouquet from Miss J. M. Scott.
Everything
changes…
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1969 © Barclays
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1992 © Martins Bank Archive Collections
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 That
Arnside sub-Branch survives so long after the merger might well have been
music to the ears of those whose effort to keep open some of the other
local Martins Branches such as STAVELEY has
been in vain. Keeping the rural way of life is all too often seen as a
luxury today, when face to face communication and participation on local
events has to battle with the insular world of “social media”. The harsh economics of village banks
haemorraging customers whilst running costs increase relentlessly could no
longer be ignored by any Bank, and they banks began their own various
periods of “consolidation” from the late 1980s to the early years of the
twenty-first century. Parliamentary
intervention temporarily slowed the slash and burn policy of some banks,
but as all of us were actively encouraged to stay AWAY from
our banks and do more and more through phone apps and computer banking,
individual banks that could once boast a network of 5000 branches now have
fewer than 200 of them still open…
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