One bank …… a tile shop ….. Café Nero ..... and a block of flats ….. the new Four Banks

So as everyone will remember there was a Chorlton discussion on retaining the name the Four Banks for the junction of Barlow Moor and Wilbraham Roads.

The planners preferred name of Chorlton Cross was and is unloved and unused. The historic name of Kemp’s Corner has all but passed out of living memory as has the previous Bank Square.

And like these two earlier names the Four Banks arose out of the everyday experience of those who lived in Chorlton.

In the first half of the last century, Kemp’s Corner made perfect sense because of Harry Kemp’s Chemist shop with its big clock which made it the commonly accepted meeting spot in Chorlton before the age of the mobile.

And likewise if you have a bank on each corner, then the Four Banks, or Four Bank Corner makes equal sense.

But the days of suburban banks is going, and Chorlton is no exception.

So, the news of planning applications for a set of apartments and shops on the site of the old HSBC and a Café Nero in the former Santander Bank offers up challenges for new names.

We shall see.

Location; Chorlton

Pictures; Chorlton former banks, 2022, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

When banks become dinosaurs …………. in Chorlton

Now there are things about the digital age which I have embraced like a man marooned in the sea embraces a log.

But online banking remains in the unsure box along with those automated tills in supermarkets.  

Given a push I will use them but reluctantly, if only because that is one less person’s job and deprives me of talking to someone.

That said the remorseless advance of doing electronic transactions rolls on and here in Chorlton that has led to the disappearance of three of the four banks at the junction of Chorlton and Wilbraham Roads, and of course depriving us of that unofficial but popular name for the spot.

The Four Banks or Four Bank Corner has gone the way of Kemp’s Corner which was pretty much used by everyone for half a century.

And now I read that Barclay’s around the corner will close in autumn, leading to a planning request for a “bank pod” in Morrison’s Car Park.

I have yet to check out the details on the City's Planning Portal, as to exactly where the pod will be located.

There is of course a history to write, both about the grand story of the demise of the bank branch, and more specifically of the history of banks here in Chorlton, which for those who regularly read the blog will know marks the difference between Old and New Chorlton.

Old Chorlton was the historic centre of the township situated around the village green and up Beech Road.  

New Chorlton was the area of new housing developed from the 1880s onwards catering for the middling people, many of who whom worked in the city but wanted to live in an area which was still semi-rural.

The development stretched our from the newly cut Wilbraham Road and along Barlow Moor and Manchester Roads.

Here could be found many professional, clerical and self-employed people who looked to use a bank.  So, while historically New Chorlton had the banks, Old Chorlton had just a small post office and a Penny Savings Bank which operated for just a few hours from the village school on the green.

Now the march of online banking with its ruthless commercial considerations may soon obliterate all the banks in Chorlton.

Location; Chorlton

Pictures, Chorlton branch banks and former banks, 2022, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

*"Plans to install a 'banking pod' in the car park of Morrisons store to provide a place for Barclays staff to meet customers after their Wilbraham Road branch closes in the autumn." Chorlton Voice Newsletter August-September 2022