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Royal Bank of Scotland: “A sober mid-Victorian interpretation of the palazzo style.”

Royal Bank of Scotland, Church Street, Sheffield. Image/DJP/2022

Royal Bank of Scotland, on Church Street, closed earlier this year, its use undermined by the growth of online banking, and Sheffield city centre lost its last grand purpose-built bank.

Now it is empty, awaiting a buyer who will have to pay more than £575,000.

‘An excellent redevelopment opportunity’ with the potential for a wide range of future uses including ‘residential, offices, hotel, retail and leisure’, subject to obtaining planning permission. The building has 9,910sqft of floor space spread across the basement and the ground, first, second and third floors.

Until a buyer comes along, and that might be a lengthy process, the bank will stand silent, dust gathering, and trees growing from the roof. It joins several gracious old buildings that stand vacant on Church Street.

But let us look back to happier times.

The year was 1866, and the directors of the Sheffield and Rotherham Bank had decided to build new premises ‘which should take its place as amongst the first in the town.’

Sheffield and Rotherham Joint Stock Bank, old premises on Church Street, Sheffield. Image/PictureSheffield

The directors invited several well-known architects to submit their plans for a new bank on the site of its old premises on Church Street.

“The aim of the architects is to produce a suitable front, which could take its place becomingly among the other buildings in the same street (the Cutlers’ Hall and the Hallamshire Bank) and be effective and business-like, without excessive decoration.”

The winning design, came from Flockton and Abbott, it was built by Mr J Niell of Bradford and Sheffield, and the wooden interiors were supplied by William Johnson and Son, Fargate.

“The style of architecture selected is Italian. The bank will have a frontage to Church Street of about 70 feet, and the elevation will exceed that of the Cutlers’ Hall. The front will be of Darley Dale stone, and the introduction of sixteen pillars of polished red granite will effectively embellish the design.

“The principal features of the exterior are those suggested by the purposes of the building and are formed mainly by the banking room with its entrance, and the general meeting room on the first floor.

“The banking room (55ft by 34ft and 21ft high) will be a large and lofty apartment, its counter being 50ft long, and especial pains have been taken to arrange it so that every portion shall be thoroughly well lighted with large and lofty windows at each end, and a roof light for the central portion.

“The entrance to the bank is very short and direct. Close by the manager’s seat and under his control is a money safe (9ft square by 6 ft) with an iron safe inside it lined with steel. Adjoining this is another safe for the reception of books. There will be communication between the safe doors and a bell in the resident’s clerk’s bedroom.”

The Sheffield and Rotherham Joint Stock Banking Co. (Limited), Church Street. 1897. Image/PictureSheffield

The bank opened in 1867, but what became of the Sheffield and Rotherham Bank?

There was a time when banks were local businesses, built to serve Sheffield’s people, but they were amongst the first businesses to disappear through national mergers and acquisitions.

The Sheffield and Rotherham Bank was one such, its history going back to 1791 when Vincent Eyre (1744-1801), solicitor, and land agent for the Duke of Norfolk, became a founding partner in Walkers, Eyre & Stanley, a new bank with branches in Sheffield and Rotherham.

Eyre probably provided a significant amount of the original capital, and like his fellow partners, Samuel Walker (a wealthy Rotherham iron merchant) and William Stanley (a prominent Rotherham merchant), probably used the bank to manage and develop his own business activities. The Duke of Norfolk was also an important early customer of the bank.

The business was sold to the Sheffield & Rotherham Joint Stock Banking Company in 1836 and grew rapidly, its main office was on Church Street, with branches in Bakewell (1837), Buxton, Cavendish Circus (1856), Dronfield (1873), Matlock Bridge (1877), Baslow (1892), Darley Dale (1893), Higher Buxton (1899), Parkgate (1899), Attercliffe (1902) and Winster (1904).

The bank had its problems, with major accounting difficulties discovered during the 1840s and bad debts soaring during the local commercial depression of the late 1870s.

In 1907, with a paid-up capital of £256,000, the bank was acquired by Williams Deacon’s Bank Ltd of London and Manchester, which had a strong network of branches in the Manchester area and was looking to expand into South Yorkshire and North Derbyshire.

Williams Deacon’s Bank later became Williams & Glyn’s Bank and subsequently disappeared within Royal Bank of Scotland.

Williams Deacon’s Bank Ltd., No. 5, Church Street, previously Sheffield and Rotherham Joint Stock Banking Co. Ltd. 1909. Image/PictureSheffield
The Cutlers Hall, postmarked 1903, Williams Deacon’s Bank Ltd., No. 5, Church Street, left, (previously Sheffield and Rotherham Joint Stock Banking Co. Ltd.). Image/PictureSheffield

©2022 David Poole. All Rights Reserved.

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History in the wall – From Martins Bank to an eyesore

Former Martins Bank, now listed as Cumberland House, on Eyre Street, Sheffield. Photograph: DJP/2021

History is all around us. Keep your eyes open and sometimes you will see something that reveals something of our past. At the corner of Eyre Street and Cumberland Street, set in the wall of a building, is an old night safe. Unused for forty-eight years, it is marked ‘Martins Bank Limited’.

It is an obvious clue as to the origins of this rather run-down looking 1960s building, and tells us that once-smart buildings can become eyesores if we don’t look after them.

A clue at the building’s former use. Night safes were built on the outside of banks, allowing money to be deposited into the bank’s safe outside of bank opening hours. Photograph: DJP/2021

Martin’s Bank was a London private bank that could trace its origins back to the London goldsmiths. Martin’s agreed to its acquisition by the Bank of Liverpool in 1918, which wanted a London presence and a seat on the London Bankers’ Clearing House; the Martin’s name was retained in the title of the enlarged bank which was known as The Bank of Liverpool and Martin’s Limited. The title was shortened to Martins Bank Limited (without an apostrophe) in 1928.

The bank had a presence in Sheffield from 1927 when the Equitable Bank, at 64 Leopold Street, merged with the Bank of Liverpool and Martins. It outgrew the premises and opened a new branch in the Telephone Buildings at the bottom of West Street in 1930. It wasn’t until 1960 that a Sheffield University branch was opened, quickly followed by this purpose-built bank  – Sheffield Moor – on Eyre Street. (Another, on Bank Street, came later).

This branch opened in 1961 on land that had once been the site of Greer and Rigby, Surgeons, and land left vacant after the bombings of World War Two.

Junction of Porter Street and Cumberland Street (in background). No 118, Porter Street, former premises of Greer and Rigby, Surgeons. Former entrance to Court No. 10 on left. Porter Street later became part of Eyre Street. Photograph: Picture Sheffield
Martins Bank in 1963. It did not occupy all the building, following the Victorian tradition of creating shop and office rental space to generate additional income. Photograph: Picture Sheffield
Martins Bank in 1970. The old buildings adjacent were demolished to make way for Deacon House. Photograph: Picture Sheffield

According to archives, this part of Sheffield was too far from the old commercial quarter to be effectively served by the West Street branch. “A beautiful modern building with interior décor which responds to the full blaze of sunshine most cheerfully, or, on a dark day when the illuminated ceiling has to be switched on, creates an oasis of light, warmth and welcome which makes it a pleasure to step inside.”

Photograph: Martins Bank Archive Collection
Photograph: Martins Bank Archive Collection

The ground floor was shared with Olivetti, typewriters, and office machine dealers, while the British Wagon Company occupied part of the first floor.

Martins Bank was bought by Barclays in 1968 and five years later the Sheffield Moor branch was closed – its existence as a bank lasting only twelve years.

The building itself was used for a variety of purposes, even a gym, and is now sub-divided as office space.

© 2021 David Poole. All Rights Reserved

Categories
Buildings

Barclays Bank: The grand building that we lost

The one that got away. I bet only a handful of people will remember this building and it might have been one of Sheffield’s finest had it survived. But it didn’t, and you’ll be surprised to learn what stands in its place today.

This was a bank that stood at the corner of Commercial Street and Fitzalan Square, demolished in the late sixties/early seventies to allow for road widening. Nowadays, its location is buried under the road section of Commercial Street, the Supertram tracks alongside following the course of the original road.

(Image: Google)

We can trace the building back to 1879, built for the Midland Banking Company (not to be confused with the Midland Bank, that 20th century institution). Its architect was Salmon Linton Swann whose office was on George Street.

It might have been this building that caused the downfall of the Midland Banking Company.

In 1878, the bank bought The King’s Arms in Commercial Street for £20,000, a portion of the public house demolished to make way for the new building.

The bank invited architects to submit plans. Thirteen architects competed for the design from Sheffield, Rotherham, Stamford, and Nottingham.

The directors awarded the prize to Swann, and the building contract to George Chambers and Son, a Sheffield construction company.

“The building will be of an imposing and handsome appearance, and the arrangements will tend to give privacy and facilitate easy and direct communication with the manager without passing through the bank room or incumbering the principal or main entrance with all the work of the bank.”

(Image: Picture Sheffield)

Its erection was well underway but a tragic accident in December 1879 halted progress and had devastating consequences for the reputations of those involved.

Just before Christmas, a whole length of projecting cornice, about 50ft above ground, fell and crashed through a wooden awning below. A workman, Thomas Moclar, fell to his death with it, and several workmen were seriously injured.

There was an air of complacency from Salmon Swann, who failed to attend the initial inquest and instead sent a letter. “I consider my presence or services not required, as I expect it will be a pure accident and one easily understood.”

The Coroner disagreed and ordered him to attend a few days later.

The jury found Swann censurable for not allowing sufficient tail weight to the cornice, and Chambers blameable for not calling the architect’s attention to such deficiency. However, they found the negligence insufficient to render them criminally culpable and that Thomas Moclar’s death had been an accident.

Construction was halted for a while, and progress hampered by having to rebuild the damaged section. By 1881, the bank was nearing completion and William Derry, a manager at the Huddersfield branch, was brought in to oversee its opening.

However, Derry arrived in difficult circumstances. Shortly before it opened, the Midland Banking Company realised that it was in financial difficulty. Believing it had ‘outgrown its resources’ a rescue was needed, and it came in the form of the Birmingham, Dudley and District Banking Company which amalgamated with it.

The bank opened under its new name, and quickly established a reputation in the city.

(Image: Picture Sheffield)

The height of the building was 70ft, the building preceding the development of Fitzalan Square, and cost about £17,000 to build.

The architecture was adopted from ‘a free treatment of the classic order’, built with Huddersfield stone fronts and brick backs, having bold fluted columns along the front, with moulded bases and carved capitals dividing the wall spaces into panels, relieved by plate glass windows.

At the principal corner of the parapet was an ornamental stone tower with an ornamented panel bearing the Sheffield coat of arms, surmounted by the carved dome, supporting a moulded canopy and finial.

Internally, the wall spaces were divided into panels by means of moulded pilasters, in Parian cement, the panels fitted with the large windows. Those along the blank walls were fitted with silver-plated glass, which added a lustre of light.

The whole was surmounted by a moulded and enriched cornice, from which sprang a deep cove, relieved by a diaper work, supporting a moulded and panelled ceiling, from the centre of which was the dome, filled in with stained glass.

From the centre of the dome a ventilating sunflower fan was suspended to extract air from the bank, and to light the space below.

The whole of the bank floor was constructed with fireproof flooring covered with tiles.

The bank was heated with Perkins’ patent hot water apparatus, the pipes obscured by perforated iron skirting running around the walls.

The whole of the Commercial Street frontage was used as offices for the manager and waiting rooms, which were divided from the bank room with mahogany glazed screens, 10ft high, and covered with light glazed roofs, introducing Tobin’s principle of ventilating tubes for fresh air.

The remainder of the floor was divided and sub-divided by desks and counters, with the rear east wall fitted up with safes. Seats and desks were appropriated for the public under the windows.

Quite unusual for the building was an entrance to a basement (9ft high) in Commercial Street. This was used as a caretaker’s apartment, complete with sitting room, scullery, and bedrooms. There was also a dining room for clerks, two strong fireproof rooms, the hollow walls lined with white glazed bricks, to store ledgers, a bullion room, and toilets. The floor was laid with wood block flooring laid on a bed of concrete, thought more suitable to prevent damp and vermin. Below the basement was the boiler room, coal cellar, and a place to store ashes and dust.

The bank merged with the Wolverhampton and Staffordshire Banking Company in 1889 to become Birmingham, District and Counties Bank, eventually becoming United Counties Bank in 1907.

In the same year, a fire almost destroyed the dome after a spark in the built-in chimney set fire to woodwork. It was threatened until firemen managed to haul hoses up to a height of 70ft to extinguish the flames.

United Counties Bank was bought by Barclays Bank in 1916, a name long-associated with the building until its sad demolition.

(Image: Picture Sheffield)

© 2020 David Poole. All Rights Reserved.