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 Martins
Bank’s second drive in branch is opened because a director of the Bank, who
lives locally, is acutely embarrassed that his wife has to cash her Martins
cheques at the counter of rivals Barclays!
The former police station on Ashley Road is chosen, and so begins
another bold foray into the kind of outlet we take for granted these days –
albeit for the purchase of fast food – the drive-in.
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In Service:
29 September 1966 until 1981
Image © Martins
Bank Archive Collections
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Incidentally, the article below can also be read on
our MARTINS DRIVE-IN BANK page. Special thanks to Ken Marsh, one of the
original members of the Epsom Staff, for the lovely image below, of the
Zephyr car at the drive-in counter.
 the bank's second drive-in branch opened at Epsom on September
29. It stands well back in Ashley Road
at the junction with Ashley Avenue, with a registry office on the opposite
corner and a church and the Magistrate's Court across the way. This rather
unusual combination is partly explained by the fact that the new branch
stands on the site of the old police station. Even if some difficulty was
experienced in obtaining sanction for change of use, despite the obvious
'lock-up', 'security' and 'custody' associations of the respective
undertakings, the outcome has fully justified the trouble. The frontage has
been laid out with stone paving, cobbles and beds for evergreen and flowering
shrubs and once our customers adapt themselves to the in and out of the
drive-in this will prove a highly popular innovation in the district. Epsom
lies in what is sometimes termed the stockbroker belt—well outside the bingo belt but close to the gin and
Jaguar belt, so to speak.
 There are the Downs, the Racecourse and sufficient green belt
to have kept the area mercifully insulated from becoming a
suburb, and the number of estate agents' offices in this small township are
an indication of the demand—and
the price—for residential property. The shopkeepers are courteous, the train
services to London frequent, and Epsom is altogether a good place to live in
if one has-the means. The branch interior is spacious, with a rosewood
counter fronted by white marble brickettes and dark glazed screens behind the
counter space. Blue-green vinyl fabric covers two walls and, if the overall
effect is somewhat clinical, the materials and finish throughout are worthy
of what may justifiably be termed a prestige branch. Here the selection of
the staff has been as imaginatively and successfully handled by London
District as the Midland District handled the staffing of Peterborough branch
which opened on the same day.
 Mr Brian du Feu,
will soon have completed his third house move in four years—an indication of what progress in banking can sometimes
involve. He was in the photographic business before joining the Bank and was
for some years secretary of the Jersey Camera Club: his interests include
hockey, tennis, badminton, surfing and skin-diving. Mr Ian Fletcher joined the staff after six
years at Chislehurst and Mr Kenneth Marsh, who has appeared frequently in
magazine photographs of cricket, hockey or rugby teams, lives conveniently in
Epsom as if by arrangement. Mr C. J. Butcher commutes cheerfully each day to
Oxted with the help of his Renault-Banger and Miss G. C. Leggett, who joined
the branch shortly before it opened, will tell any girl with ideas about the
glamour of working in the Big City that a secretary's job in a London fashion
house with travel costs of £2 a week for two years is a poor substitute
for working at Epsom branch and living at home on Epsom Downs. Quite naturally she wanted to try the
London job and quite sensibly she packed it in: quite understandably Mr du Feu
and his staff are very glad that she did. Epsom branch is off to a good
start, and the business is likely to continue expansion on private and commercial
lines. Our only regret about going there is that we cannot state how many
accounts they have opened already, because one never knows who might read
these words. But we now have a lot more sympathy for the sad-faced, milling
crowds we passed on Hungerford Bridge and in Waterloo station on our way out
that morning. They looked as if they had seen Epsom branch and were sorry
they couldn't work there.
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