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It is as if someone were designing a wedding
cake rather than a building, and to look at it, Old Swan could easily have
been constructed from red and white LEGO®
bricks. Messrs Grayson and Ould Architects
have really gone to town here - with a tower, a mock belfry, ornamental
windows, bay windows, a brick arch or two, a stacked roof with curlecues, an
entrance porch and even balustrades at the lower level, this part of
Liverpool is obviously in for a treat in 1906 when the Bank of Liverpool
moves in to its newly built Branch at Old Swan. It is also a treat that has continued ever
since with Barclays still occupying the building nearly 120 years later! The
photograph (below, right) dates from somewhere around the late 1940s.
A mass of tram wires can be seen overhead, and a
long queue of what looks like expectant bank customers, unless of course they
are simply waiting for the next tram! The
cheque shown below from Old Swan Branch is one of the first to employ a
number of new security features, and of course the Magnetic Ink Line that
heralds the age of reading and sorting cheques by electronic means.
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In Service: 1893 (but from 1906 at
these premises) until 15 December 2017
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Image © The Building News 24 August 1906
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You can
read more about this, including how Martins is the first bank to use this equipment
and develop the system still used today in the UK for the clearing of
cheques, in our TECHNOLOGY section.
The complicated patterning across the main body of the cheque is
designed to prevent fraud. Prior to this design, Martins Bank Cheques had
the words “MARTINS BANK LIMITED” printed over and over
again in the background across the entire surface.
Our feature focusses on the
retirement in 1965 of Mr W C Frost, Manager of Old Swan for five years.
These are still firmly the days when a job in a bank was a job for
life. Martins Bank’s Managers are
recorded retiring in the mid to late 1960s having served in some cases up
to forty-seven years of their lives for the same employer. Mr frost has an
amazing total service of forty-three years, and is no doubt ready now to
hang up his Bank tie for good…
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Image © Barclays Ref 0030-1676
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  when Mr Frost, Manager of Old
Swan branch, Liverpool,
retired at the end of March after 43 years’ service, over 50 past and present
colleagues met at the branch to take sherry with him. They were welcomed by
Mr P. G. Kennerley (Pro Manager), who spoke of the high esteem in which Mr
Frost was held by both staff and customers, and after Mrs Angela Thompson had
presented a bouquet to Mrs Frost he called upon the District General Manager
to make the presentation. Mr Buchanan had
known Mr Frost since his own junior days at Great Crosby branch under Mr
Frost’s guidance and he described him as a most kindly and sympathetic man.
He made special mention of Mr Frost’s interest in amateur football—he was treasurer of the I. Zingari Football
League for many years—and after thanking him for his loyal service handed him
a cheque on behalf of the many subscribers. Mr Frost’s reply, interspersed with reminiscences, was
one of thanks to all his friends for joining him on his last day in the Bank,
for their kind thoughts and for their generosity: the subscription money
would go towards a greenhouse. Although a
Londoner, Mr Frost entered the Bank in 1921 at Liverpool Foreign branch where
he served eight years. After moving to Toxteth branch he spent all his career
at Liverpool District branches and was appointed Manager of Blundellsands
branch in 1955 and of Old Swan branch in 1960. He spent the years 1942-46 in
the R.A.F.
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 Robert Montgomery’s amazing collection of modern day UK
bank branches has yielded this lovely shot of Old Swan Branch in May 2014, just
slightly more than three and a half years before its permanent closure…
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Image © Barclays Ref 0030-1676
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Image © Martins Bank Archive Collections
– Robert Montgomery
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In our Branch History
below, you will see a much larger number of entries than we usually provide
in that particular section of our Branch Network feature. This is because our friends at Barclays
Group Archives unearthed for us, details from Martins Bank’s premises
register, which demonstrate a busy life for the building at 521 Prescot
Road…
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