For the past 47 years, the Gateacre Society has banked with the HSBC - or its predecessor the Midland Bank. However, recent events have forced a re-think: our branch in Woolton closed down, the branch in Allerton Road Mossley Hill is about to become 'counterless' … and now we have been notified that, if we wish to continue as their customer, we'll have to transfer to a 'Charitable Bank Account' and pay £5 a month, plus 40p per cheque paid in or out. For a small society such as ours, such charges are, we feel, out of all proportion to the benefit we derive from banking with them - so we shall be taking our custom elsewhere.

The reason we were with the HSBC is, of course, because in 1974, when the Society was founded, the Midland Bank actually had a branch in Gateacre. It was the building near the bottom of Gateacre Brow that is now the doctors' surgery. When it first opened in the 1960s (shortly before Gateacre Village became a Conservation Area) its design - by the Liverpool architects Weightman & Bullen - was praised by the architectural commentator and historian Prof. Nikolaus Pevsner. In 'The Buildings of England (South Lancashire)', published in 1969, he called it "excellent". Although slightly extended in 1991, after the Midland Bank had sold it for conversion to a medical practice, its essential character remains - and it can still be regarded as part of the 'black-and-white tradition' for which Gateacre Village is well-known.