Martins Bank

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The Gresham grasshopper

Martins Bank had 16th century origins, and was said to have been founded by Sir Thomas Gresham, who began trading in Lombard Street at the sign of the Grasshopper.

In 1918, the bank was acquired by the Bank of Liverpool, which had been founded in 1831 in Liverpool, England, and the name of the merged bank became the Bank of Liverpool and Martins Ltd. However, the name was shortened to Martins Bank Ltd in 1928. By then, the bank had expanded to some 560 branches and had a logo featuring a grasshopper, which was the family crest of Sir Thomas Gresham.

A new headquarters building for Martins Bank Ltd was designed by the architect Herbert James Rowse in the Classical Revival style and constructed in 1932 in Water Street, Liverpool. [1]

The bank was bought by Barclays Bank Ltd in 1969, when all of its seven hundred branches became branches of Barclays.

[edit] Trivia

In 1901, the activities of the Martins Bank employee Thomas Goudie formed the subject of arguably the world's first filmed crime reconstruction, The Arrest of Goudie, filmed by Mitchell and Kenyon. Goudie had stolen £70,000 from the bank to cover his gambling debts and was subsequently sentenced to ten years' imprisonment.

In early episodes of the BBC comedy serial Dad's Army, Captain Mainwaring, Sergeant Wilson and young Pike work at the Walmington-on-Sea branch of Martins Bank. In later episodes, this was changed to the fictional Swallow Bank.