NW	NE	GREAT BARR	71	62nd
SW	SE	893 Walsall Road, Birmingham B42 1TN 021-357 3361	GR	1958

In 1951, the freehold site at the corner of Walsall Road and Calshot Road was purchased. This site comprised approximately 1,525 square yards, with a frontage of 43 yards 2 feet. Messrs W Parrott & Antrobus acted for the vendors, the purchase price being £20, subject to the Bank paying professional charges and stamp duty. However, erection of a branch building was not completed for some years (due to post-war building restrictions), as this extract from the Bank's 1958 Annual Report shows:
On the 25th April, 1958 a new Branch of the Bank was opened at 893, Walsall Road, Great Barr, by Alderman G H W Griffiths (sic), JP, and full banking facilities were provided from that date. The Branch will be known as the Great Barr Branch, and will, it is hoped, serve the needs of a quickly growing area.

The architect responsible for the new building is believed to have been the City Arcitect:  A G Sheppard Fidler.

 

The opening of the new branch at Great Barr appears to have created  an identity confusion vis-a-vis Tower Hill branch. Within two months of the branch opening, a Head Office Circular to branches (dated June 18th 1958) stated that cases have arisen where a depositor has handed in a transfer form requesting that the account be transferred to the Great Barr Branch, but it has afterwards transpired that it was intended for Tower Hill Branch. This confusion may have been averted if the new branch had been called 'Scott Arms'. Such title may have been under consideration when branch sort codes were issued - the number 47 was not used, and 'Scott Arms' would have fitted this number alphabetically; instead Great Barr was allocated 71, adding the branch to the end of the list, which at that date ended with Yardley having Code 70.

 

The cost of the building work was approximately £10,600. A small portion of this sum (£85 plus costs) was recouped in 1961 when 373 square yards of land adjoining 4 Calshot Road was sold to the Midlands Electricity Board to enable an electricity sub-station to be built.

below (April 25th 1958):

below:

Alderman Griffith is presented with a solid silver box by the Bank's Chairman (Councillor I L Morgan). Looking on are the Bank's General Manager (H J Sutherland - left) and the Lord Mayor (Alderman J J Grogan). The box was made by Adie Brothers Ltd of Birmingham; the lid was inscribed with the Bank's 'key' logo and was appropriately inscribed on the front panel.

Managers:
1959 to 1969 - R N Wilcox
1970 to 1974 - M J Smith

The majority of the old, and very large, parish of Great Barr lies outside Birmingham, in what was originally Staffordshire, but is now part of Walsall Metropolitan District. A portion of the parish came into Birmingham in 1928, and both private and council houses were built in the area, before and after the Second World War. Great Barr is situated about 4½-miles north of Birmingham's centre.

 

Towards the end of 1948, the Bank requested the City's Public Works Committee to allocate a site at the junction of Walsall Road and Calshot Road immediately adjoining No 905 Walsall Road, to be designated for the Bank's purposes. This site, near to Birmingham's boundary with Staffordshire, in a shopping area at the junction of the Walsall Road (A34) and Queslett Road/Newton Road (A4041) known locally as the Scott Arms, would not only cater for the district's increasing population, but would be likely to attract business from outside the city: Aldridge, Walsall, and West Bromwich.