11-42-40 Liverpool Heathfield

The Bank of Liverpool’s Heathfield Branch is an elegant office set on a corner aspect.

1940 ish Heathfield Bank of Liverpool Crest Close Up BGA Ref 3-4373.jpg

This beautiful sculpture representing the Liver Bird, features promiently on the front of the building which is situated in Smithdown Place. Heathfield Branch is opened in 1906 and is not to be confused with Smithdown Branch, opened twenty years earlier at Smithdown Road.

At the time this photo was taken, the Branch still bore a plaque, fitted across the doorway, displaying the Bank of Liverpool’s opening hours, which prior to 1918 are four hours longer each week than the standard hours seen during Martins’ era.

By 1969 the staff associations and the banking union and have pushed for an end to Saturday opening, and Martins’ former branches begin to open late on Thursdays.

In Service: January 1906 until October 1972

Image © Barclays Ref: 0030-4473

This is supposed to be by way of compensating customers for the reduction in trading hours, but for Barclays, this will be a temporary move whilst its network of Barclaycash machines is expanded more quickly than originally planned. (See our feature page MARTINS AUTO CASHIER). However, within only twelve years of Saturday closing, competitive pressure, and in particular banking’s new found love for “marketing” will bring Saturday opening back again, with all banks will fighting to start down the slippery slope of selling ever more inventive but flawed “products” before descending into the murky mess that became PPI - payment protection insurance.

This is all a far cry from the commitment to extremely high standards of service espoused by Martins Bank, and its commitment to “go to EXTREMES to be helpful”. We shall therefore return to December 1964, as Heathfield bids farewell to Manager Adrian Ellis, who after 42 dedicated years of service with the bank, and (in common with a number of long serving staff at this time) is, sadly, too ill to be at his own retirement celebration. Mr Ellis lives on until 1 August 1967, when he dies at what today would be considered the very early age of 64…

1965 01 MBM.jpg 1954 to 1965 Mr A R Ellis Manager MBM-Sp65P56.jpg the many friends of Mr Adrian R. Ellis were extremely sorry when increasing health problems caused his retirement at the end of December. At the time his absence from Heathfield branch, of which he had been Manager for 10 years, made a formal presentation impossible much to the regret of his colleagues, but a cheque to which they had subscribed was sent to him by Mr Buchanan who expressed the Bank's gratitude for more than 42 years’ excellent service and conveyed good wishes for the future. Mr Ellis entered the service at Water Street in 1923 working in Merseyside branches until going in 1939 to Plymouth where he became Manager in 1941. After 3 years with H.M. Forces he joined the Visiting Inspection Department in 1946 and was appointed Manager of Heathfield branch in 1954.

Robert Montgomery has spent a number of years taking photographs of former branch banks, and has kindly donated a large number of these images to the Archive. The contemporary view of Martins Bank’s Liverpool Heathfield branch was taken in 2009, at which time the building was in use as a GP practice, using the iconic Liverpool address “Penny Lane” where, as the song has it, “The Banker never wears a mac, in the pouring rain, VERY strange”…

Image © Barclays Ref: 0030-4473

Image © Martins Bank Archive Collections - Robert Montgomery



*Mr F E Bold* *On the Staff* *1909 to 1913*	*Mr F J Brennell* *Joined the Bank Here* *1913*	*Mr W Roberts* *On the Staff* *1920 to 1922*	*Mr J V Dobie* *Pro Manager* *1925 to 1929*	*Mr A E Pearson* *On the Staff* *1936 to 1937*	*Mr W A Foulkes* *Pro Manager* *1942 to 1942*



*Mr D W S Wilson* *On the Staff* *1942 to 1943*	*Mr K E Jarvis* *On the Staff* *1949 to 1953*	*Mr W Alderton* *On the Staff* *1949 to 1954*	*Mr A R Ellis* *Manager* *1954 to 1965*	*Mr R E Pickering* *Manager* *1965 onwards*	*Mr J W Tickle* *Pro Manager* *1968*