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The branch next door…
 Many small
shops in suburban areas are situated within houses or rows of houses, where
the ground floor level carries out the business, and the upper levels are
used either as living accommodation for the owner, or divided into flats
and rented out. Martins Bank’s
sub-Branch at Heysham is a typical example, and is situated at one end of a
row of useful shops.
Heysham
is a suburb of Morecambe, although the modern day expansion of both Morecambe
and Lancaster tends to squeeze what were once village areas in their own
right into a conurbation – hard to tell whereabouts you are within its
sprawl. Martins Bank also has sub
branches in the West End and Bare districts of Morecambe.
Off to the TT races…
Image © Northcliffe Media Limited Image
created courtesy of THE BRITISH LIBRARY BOARD. Image reproduced with kind
permission of The British Newspaper Archive
A tiny branch such as this, on
the doorstep of a traditional Northern Seaside Resort, does seem an
unlikely place to hear a variety of European languages spoken, but Heysham
is a key port from which direct daily sailings (operated by the World
famous “Steam Packet” Company) are made to the Isle of Man. During the
annual T T Races, Heysham branch
is quite heavily used to provide foreign currency exchange to motorcyclists
from all over Europe, before they make the trip across to the Island. Heysham sub-Branch remains open under Barclays
until 2000, it is manned by two cashiers, and even has its own cash machine
for the last few years of its life.
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In Service: Monday 4 December 1939 until Friday 7 April
2000
Branch
Images: © Barclays Ref 0030-1299
An advertisement like this one appeared in
the Morecambe Guardian 2 Dec 1939
Image © Martins Bank Archive Collections -
Image Restored June 2018
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Under
Martins, Heysham sub-Branch operates across the full six-day banking week
with only a slight reduction in hours for a short lunch break and to allow
transport of work back to Morecambe in the afternoon. Following pressure
from the banking unions, Saturday opening is withdrawn from 1 July 1968.
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