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When choosing the location
for a new Branch, to be on a corner – and therefore to have your branding
visible in TWO
streets at
once – has always been high on the list of desirable features sought by
British Banks.
By 1967 the
transformation is complete and the new Branch opens – you can see how it
looks on the inside further down the page. |
In Service: 23 October 1967 until 25 June 1976
Image ca.1973 Courtesy of Knutsford
Heritage Centre from the Knutsford Guardian Collection
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1965 – Knutsford branch
in its previous life. Image ©
Barclays Ref 0025-0608 |
Sadly, there are
currently no images available which show the exterior of the Branch as
Martins, but thanks to our friends at KNUTSFORD HERITAGE CENTRE there is, in the above photograph,
a glimpse of how it looked from the Princess Street Aspect, as a Branch of
Barclays, in the early 1970s. There is also this photo in Barclays’
collection (left), taken by Martins Bank’s premises team, showing Messrs
Middleston & Co’s Shop before conversion to a bank.
Martins Bank Magazine
visits Knutsford Branch not long after it opens, and readers are treated to a
colour image of the staff in their new surroundings. The writer of the article makes much of
Knutsford’s traffic situation, and perceived “manners of the road”, and we
are assured by Knutsford Heritage that things haven’t changed much in the
fifty years or so since the article was written… |
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In front of
it are two more cars and in front of them another lorry is being unloaded. So
one sits and waits, quite unaware that, in this, one is doing the right thing
in Knutsford. One does not go honking and rat-racing around Knutsford.
One waits and looks to right and left at the antique shop or the family
grocers (whence comes a smell of real bacon and freshly ground coffee), or at
the Italianesque architecture of Richard Harding Watt or at the Georgian shop
fronts and attractive coffee houses. After a while one realises with a shock
that the road in front has cleared and that a patient and well-mannered queue
has now formed behind. Significantly, no driver in that queue has attempted
to blast on his horn. If, to you, Knutsford sounds the kind of place you just
couldn't stand, please stay away. |
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The people won't mind at all, though you
will miss quite a lot. Do you know of any other town where the main street
ends in the country without first tailing off through council semi's and
car-dumps? Such is King Street where the traffic queues form as they do in
Princess Street, which is where we came in and where you can come in from the
Tabley interchange on the M6 only two miles away. Please don't shout about
Knutsford too much to others. The town is doing very nicely residentially,
from numerous visitors, as a host town to research scientists and as a
pleasant and individualistic shopping centre. Some of the big boys have shops
there already—looking
self-consciously rural—and, if the proposed very imaginative and sensible development
plan succeeds, more will set up in the new precinct between the two existing
main shopping streets which will be preserved. On the fringe of the town
Tabley and Tatton Parks ensure a rural background along with the Cheshire
Meres nearby, and to date the more vicious planners have done nothing worse
than threaten the beautiful village of Mobberley with Manchester's overspill. Knutsford's population of 10,000 is
expected to reach 17,000 by 1981, its shopping population rising from 18,000
to 26,000 in that time. The air of Mrs Gaskell's Cranford will therefore remain, as no doubt will the former
homes of Highwayman Higgins and of Trumpet Major Smith who sounded the
'Charge' for the Light Brigade at Balaclava. The county jail has been
demolished long since but at the Sessions House the Quarter Sessions are
still shared with Chester. Although Knutsford remembers the Danes its
survival and popularity with the county families may well have originated
from its high standing in the judiciary system. There are 60 clubs, societies and
associations in the town and after only a fortnight at the new branch Mr
Saunders has become accustomed to 'You'll be at our meeting, won't you?' In
Knutsford that is a promising start, not because the local people are snooty in
any way but because it shows Mr Saunders as the kind of friendly man they
want to have in their midst. Well, they've got him. And his wife! So to Knutsford we can say 'You lucky people!'
If they want more than Mr and Mrs Saunders, who reciprocate by thinking
Knutsford marvellous, they have only to call at the branch to enjoy the best
of competent personal service from Mr Tickle and Mrs Grassby and thus be
doubly fortunate: trebly fortunate in their surroundings, as the photograph
shows, with a convenient car park at the back of the office. Let us hope
that all the luck does not run one way. The staff have the ability and
deserve plenty of luck too. You might look them up and wish them well, but do
watch for that red Mini as you turn into Princess Street.
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