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The Bank of Liverpool
has been in business for nearly sixty years when it opens a branch at 29
Allerton Road. This was certainly a good choice of location for a bank, as
what became the Woolton branch of Martins Bank continued to serve customers
of Barclays until June 2021, one hundred and thirty-three years later. Nostalgia doesn’t come much better than
this lovely colour image from Barclays which was taken in the 1960s. We are
also indebted to Robert montgomery, who since 2009 has been photographing
former Martins Branches at time of permanent closure.
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In Service: 2 July 1888 until 18
June 2021
Image © Barclays Ref
0030-1693
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In our “then and now” feature
further down this page, you can see how the Martins Bank branding was seen
once more in June 2021, when the Barclays signs were taken down. In its
Martins Bank days, Woolton operates as a full branch of Martins right up to
the merger with Barclays in 1969, and of the many managers at the helm, we
have images of no fewer than SIX in our staff gallery below! At the end of August 1967, one of them, Mr
A Hallam retires after 43 years with Martins, the last ten as manager of
Woolton Branch. As always on these
occasions, Martins Bank Magazine is on hand to tell the story…
  on August 31 after 43 years' service,
all except the war years spent in the Liverpool District, Mr Hallam retired
as Manager of Woolton branch. Over fifty past and present colleagues gathered
at the branch for a buffet party which, considering it was the end of the
quarter and also the holiday season, was a tribute to his popularity. It was particularly pleasing to welcome the
complete Hallam family, including his eight-months-old granddaughter who, it
was suggested, might swell the quota of new savings account holders. After Mrs Hallam had received a bouquet from Miss
Jacqueline Hilton, Mr Buchanan presented a cheque, to be used to buy a watch,
and a list of over sixty subscribers.
He referred most warmly to the excellent progress of the business
during the ten years of Mr Hallam's stewardship and made special mention of
the high esteeem of the staff, whose welfare had always been Mr Hallam's
prime consideration. In his response Arthur
Hallam reflected on pleasant memories of his Bank service and thanked Mr
Buchanan for his kind words. He also expressed appreciation of the gift,
paying tribute to the support he had always received from his staff.
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 A small but growing number of former Martins Bank
Branches are revealing their identity by the removal of Barclays’ signage
at time of permanent closure. Robert
Montgomery has faithfully taken photographs of closed Martins Bank Branches
since 2009, and his contemporary image of Woolton below, is a beautiful but
haunting reminder of the name of Martins, briefly revealed once more in
that part of the World…
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Image © Barclays
Ref 0030-1693
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Image © Martins
Bank Archive Collections – Robert Montgomery
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The photograph below (right) was taken in July 2023 by the
nephew of Martins Bank’s former Advertising Manager Geoff Kelly. It is good
to see not only that the name of Martins is so indelibly etched into the
stonework above the door, but also that the building is “to let” rather
than “for sale”. We hope this means that for the time being at least, the
building will remain in Barclays’ portfolio!
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Hanging on the telephone…
 A number of visitors to Martins
Bank Archive have queried the way in which branch telephone numbers are
represented in the Branch Information section at the bottom of each of our
1000+ Branch Network pages. The telephone number for a particular branch is
shown as it was written in the 1950s and 60s. Even though Subscriber Trunk
Dialling (know as STD) had been around since the late 1950s, it took more
than ten years to convert all of the telephone exchanges situated in
cities, towns and villages around the UK.
An intermediate way of making sure that changeover to dialling by
numbers only would go smoothly, was to represent the name of the local
exchange with letters. The system of having three letters on a phone dial
or pad for each of the numbers 1-9 continued until smartphones arrived,
with their own QWERTY keyboards for typing words. In the case of Liverpool
Woolton branch, which was on the telephone exchange at nearby Gatacre, you
dialled three numbers corresponding to the first three letters of the
exchange name – that is to say GAT.
 Therefore, although the number
was written as GATacre 1034, you actually dialled 317 1034.
You would also give out your phone number to others as three letters
followed by digits. Later on, dialling codes were introduced to prefix
telephone numbers, so that to call Woolton Branch from outside Liverpool
for example, you would dial: 051(for liverpool) 317(for the local exchange) and 1034 (for the person you were
calling). Since that time of course as the demand for more and
more connections has increased, phone numbers have changed beyond all
recognition. In 1927, the telephone number for Kendal Branch was simply
Kendal 8. Almost a century on, and that number would now consist of ELEVEN digits!
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Image © Martins
Bank Archive Collections – Geoff Kelly
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