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In Service: 24 January 1963 until 30 December 1988
Image © Barclays
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It is
therefore SERVICE and the reputation for good service that is the all important
factor in a successful expansion.
Martins Bank moves some of its most experienced Managers from one end
of the country to the other, and researches extensively the quality of
customer and range of business that can be attracted by the launch of a new
office. The biggest threat comes from
the competition, whose own branches are very well established. So follows the kind of article that is
Martins Bank Magazine at its best – a history lesson ( in Winchester it’s all
about the Cathedral and King Alfred the Great), and a long piece about the
pedigree of the staff. Topped off with
a rare colour interior photograph, this visit to Winchester must have made
many Northern staff quite envious of the top notch facilities to be enjoyed
by their Southern, or Southward moving, colleagues…
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The progress of the business to date fully justifies the
Bank's faith in its own training and in Mr Harding who is our youngest
manager. While one can learn many things there is no magic formula for
attracting business but 'Be yourself must surely come high in the do's and
dont's. Mr Harding is, all the time, himself and this we liked. He entered
the service at Kensington High Street in 1954 under the Graduate Training
Scheme and his first signing authority came at Wigmore Street branch in 1961.
He attended the Senior Training Course this year. Mr P. J. Blatch, who takes
charge very capably in Mr Harding's absence, comes from Southampton where he
entered the Bank in 1954. We spent most of the morning in an unrehearsed game
of hide and seek for his counter duties kept him busy but finally we had an
entertaining talk which began in the kitchen and continued in the staff
rest-room, where we were later joined by Mr Harding bringing with him Mr E.
P. Chambers, Chief Cashier of the Bank, who had called while on a caravan
holiday.
By the time this Magazine is published we hope that some of
Mr Blatch's roses will have been exhibited successfully at the Bank's Annual
Flower Show. The third member of the staff, Mr A. P. C. Dalziel, started his
banking life at Lilliput in 1962 having originally intended to enter the
Merchant Navy. Judging from his attitude to banking it was hard to believe
this was his second choice but adaptability is one of the ingredients
essential to success and we shall be surprised if we do not hear a lot more
of Mr Dalziel in the years to come. We were sorry that Miss Clarence was away
from the office but we arranged that she should appear in the photograph
where, her male colleagues assured me, she most certainly deserves a place.
She, too, is an import having joined the Bank at Darlington in 1961, coming
to Winchester branch when her family moved south. We were joined at lunch by
Mr and Mrs Harding and also spent a most enjoyable evening at their charming
home at King's Worthy only a few miles out of the city. It was a relief to us
to find that a real home, as against a house to live in, had come their way
and this house and garden, 140 years old, is something that they and their
young son will always remember, more particularly as they spent three months
in a hotel while house-hunting. Mr Harding, had, as it were, been 'pipped on
the post' for a house he tried to buy in January and when Miss Clarence
joined the staff that month and mentioned her new home address… Such things can happen—even in Winchester!
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To visit
Winchester on a fine day in early summer is to see Old England at its best.
There are other fine and ancient cathedral cities but only one which, a
thousand years ago, was Alfred the Great's capital. The man who said to us
'Winchester 
