Bank Accommodation
by Norman Worwood
Most branches had useful living accommodation above them and I was fortunate enough to be
offered a large flat over the Billesley Branch, where I and my family eventually lived for eight years until buying a house of our
own. As with many immediate post-War marriages, the couple would return from the honeymoon to 'rooms' in the home of someone else
and for one year prior to moving into the Bank flat, we had done just that, so had very little furniture.
Our two rooms were only about
half a mile from the newly-acquired flat and although we had few possessions, we had no car, nor in any case would a normal car have
been sufficiently large to carry those we did have. Moreover, the Bank did not pay very well, so a commercial contractor was to be
avoided if at all possible. My father-in-law, however, was the Superintendent of a Birmingham Corporation Salvage Department Depot.
And what did salvage departments have a-plenty? Why! dustcarts! The Bank's then General Manager, Harold Carver, was a rather correct
man who lived in Wylde Green, then part of posh Sutton Coldfield, so we had to make sure he did not get any inkling of our strange
mode of moving. In the event, our first house-moving went entirely successfully and cost a couple of pints of Ansells for the dustmen.
Well, of course the dustcart was cleaned out beforehand - wasn't it?