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This is a moderately remote
and very beautiful part of the world. We were delighted to hear from Gerry
Caygill, whose job it is in the 1960s to man the front room sub branch at
Warcop each Friday Morning. As Gerry
recalls, thanks to a nearby army training camp, excitement in banking is not
confined to the larger towns…
Exploding
sheep and women in sports cars… |
In Service: 1962 until 18 December 1970
Image © Barclays Ref 0030-3066 |
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I
joined Martins at Appleby in Westmorland from school in December 1959.
Memories of that particular branch were mixed, suffice it to say that a
somewhat ‘Dickensian’ attitude prevailed. Appleby had a sub branch in the
small village of Warcop, just along the A66 before Brough. This was run by
myself for a couple of hours each Friday morning, in the front room of a customer’s
cottage. It was a beautiful rural setting with a stream trickling by over the
road. The usual situation - bag of
cash, rubber stamps and a handful of bank credits and debits etc, all
transactions entered on a hand written waste sheet*. They were then added to
the parent branch waste* on return. My venerable taxi driver doubled as the
guard and that was the sum of our security. I don't think that it ever
crossed our minds that we may be robbed. Our customers were a regular bunch
and would always enter the “bank” from the queue outside, one at a time, for
privacy. They were mostly local farmers, the vicar and usually several
officers from the nearby G.T.A. - an army tank training camp in the Pennines,
where live ammunition was fired, despite the fact that flocks of sheep were
grazing on the common fellside land. Inevitably there were casualties, so the
War Department would pay a bounty for every sheep destroyed. The farmers had
to produce a specified piece of a sheep, probably a horn or hoof, in order to
qualify for the payment. It seemed mildly amusing at the time, unless you
were a sheep of course! One day a wealthy local, lady landowner customer,
pulled up in brand new white Jaguar sports car. When I complimented her on
the gleaming car she confessed to being quite miffed at the chauvinistic
attitude of the salesman in the Kendal garage. “Do you know”, she said, “he
commented about ladies being careful when driving high powered sports cars”.
“I wouldn't mind”, she said, “but I've done the Monte Carlo Rally – twice”! Text © Gerry Caygill June 2011
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