Boston, Lincolnshire
Boston is a town and small port in Lincolnshire, on the east coast of England 100 miles north of London. It is the largest town of the wider Borough of Boston local government district; the town itself had a population of 35,124 at the 2001 census, while the borough had a total population of 66,900, at the ONS mid-2015 estimates. It is due north of Greenwich on the Prime Meridian. Boston's most notable landmark is St Botolph's Church, said to be the largest parish church in England, visible for miles around from the flat lands of Lincolnshire. Residents of Boston are known as Bostonians. Emigrants from Boston named several other settlements around the world after the town, most notably Boston, Massachusetts, in the United States; the name "Boston" is said to be a contraction of "Saint Botolph's town", "stone", or "tun" for a hamlet or farm, hence the Latin villa Sancti Botulfi "St. Botulf's village"); the town was once held to have been a Roman settlement. It is linked to the monastery established by the Saxon monk Botolph at "Icanhoe" on the Witham in AD 654 and destroyed by the Vikings in 870, but this is now doubted by modern historians.
The early medieval geography of The Fens was much more fluid than it is today and, at that time, the Witham did not flow near the site of Boston. Botolph's establishment is most to have been in Suffolk. However, he was a popular missionary and saint to whom many churches between Yorkshire and Sussex are dedicated; the 1086 Domesday Book does not mention Boston by name, but nearby settlements of the tenant-in-chief Count Alan Rufus of Brittany are covered. Its present territory was then part of the grant of Skirbeck, part of the wealthy manor of Drayton, which before 1066 had been owned by Ralph the Staller, Edward the Confessor's Earl of East Anglia. Skirbeck had two churches and one is to have been that dedicated to St Botolph, in what was Botolph's town. Skirbeck is now considered part of Boston, but the name remains, as a church parish and an electoral ward; the order of importance was the other way round, when the Boston quarter of Skirbeck developed at the head of the Haven, which lies under the present Market Place.
At that stage, The Haven was the tidal part of the stream, now represented by the Stone Bridge Drain, which carried the water from the East and West Fens. The line of the road through Wide Bargate, to A52 and A16, is to have developed on its marine silt levees, it led, as it does now, to the high ground at Sibsey, thence to Lindsey. The reason for the original development of the town, away from the centre of Skirbeck, was that Boston lay on the point where navigable tidal water was alongside the land route, which used the Devensian terminal moraine ridge at Sibsey, between the upland of East Lindsey and the three routes to the south of Boston: The coastal route, on the marine silts, crossed the mouth of Bicker Haven towards Spalding; the Sleaford route, into Kesteven, passed via Swineshead, thence following the old course of the River Slea, on its marine silt levee. The Salters' Way route into Kesteven, left Holland from Donington; this route was much more developed, in the Medieval period, by Bridge End Priory.
The River Witham seems to have joined The Haven after the flood of September 1014, having abandoned the port of Drayton, on what subsequently became known as Bicker Haven. The predecessor of Ralph the Staller owned most of both Skirbeck and Drayton, so it was a simple task to transfer his business from Drayton, but the Domesday Book of 1086 still records his source of income in Boston under the heading of Drayton, so Boston's name is famously not mentioned; the Town Bridge still maintains the pre-flood route, along the old Haven bank. After the Norman Conquest, Ralph the Staller's property was taken over by Count Alan, it subsequently came to be attached to the Earldom of Richmond, North Yorkshire, known as the Richmond Fee. It lay on the left bank of The Haven. During the eleventh and twelfth centuries, Boston grew into port. In 1204, King John vested sole control over the town in his bailiff; that year or the next, he levied a "fifteenth" tax of 6.67% on the moveable goods of merchants in the ports of England: the merchants of Boston paid £780, the highest in the kingdom after London's £836.
Thus by the opening of the thirteenth century, it was significant in trade with the continent of Europe and ranked as a port of the Hanseatic League. Edward III named it a staple port for the wool trade in 1369. Apart from wool, Boston exported salt, produced locally on the Holland coast, produced up-river, lead, produced in Derbyshire and brought via Lincoln, up-river. A quarrel between the local and foreign merchants led to the withdrawal of the Hansards around 1470. Around the same time, the decline of the local guilds and shift towards domestic weaving of English wool led to a near-complete collapse of the town's foreign trade; the silting of the Haven only furthered the town's decline. At the Dissolution of the Monasteries by Henry VIII during the English Reformation, Boston's Dominican, Franciscan and Augustinian friaries—erected during the boom years of the 13th and 14th centuries—were all expropriated; the refectory of the Dominican friary was converted into a theatre in 1965 and now houses the Blackfriars Arts Centre.
Henry VIII granted the town its charter in 1545 and Boston had two Members of Parliament from 1552. The staple trade made Boston a centre of intellectual influence from the Continent, including the teachings of John Calvin that becam
United Kingdom census, 2011
A census of the population of the United Kingdom is taken every ten years. The 2011 census was held in all countries of the UK on 27 March 2011, it was the first UK census. The Office for National Statistics is responsible for the census in England and Wales, the General Register Office for Scotland is responsible for the census in Scotland, the Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency is responsible for the census in Northern Ireland; the Office for National Statistics is the executive office of the UK Statistics Authority, a non-ministerial department formed in 2008 and which reports directly to Parliament. ONS is the UK Government's single largest statistical producer of independent statistics on the UK's economy and society, used to assist the planning and allocation of resources, policy-making and decision-making. ONS designs and runs the census in England and Wales. In its capacity as the national statistics office for the United Kingdom, ONS compiles and releases census tables for the United Kingdom when the data from England and Wales and Northern Ireland are complete.
In the run-up to the census both the main UK political parties expressed concerns about the increasing cost and the value for money of the census, it was suggested that the 2011 census might be the last decennial census to be taken. The first results from the 2011 census and sex, occupied households estimates for England and Wales and Northern Ireland, were released on 16 July 2012; the first results for Scotland, the first UK-wide results, were published on 17 December 2012. More detailed and specialised data were published from 2013; the Registrar General John Rickman conducted the first census of Great Britain's population, was responsible for the ten-yearly reports published between 1801 and 1831. During the first 100 years of census-taking the population of England and Wales grew more than threefold, to around 32 million, that of Scotland, where a separate census has been carried out since 1861, to about 4.5 million. From 1911 onwards rapid social change, scientific breakthroughs, major world events affected the structure of the population.
A fire that destroyed census records in 1931, the declaration of war in 1939, made the 1951 census hugely significant in recording 30 years of change over one of the most turbulent periods in British history. The 1971 census was run by the newly created Office of Population Censuses and Surveys, a body formed by the merger of the General Register Office and Government Social Survey. In 1996 the Office for National Statistics was formed by merging the Central Statistical Office, OPCS and the statistics division of the Department of Employment. In 2008 the UK Statistics Authority was established as an independent body. A population census is a key instrument for assessing the needs of local communities; when related to other data sources such as housing or agricultural censuses, or sample surveys, the data becomes more useful. Most countries of the world take censuses: the United Nations recommends that countries take a census at least once every ten years; the design for the 2011 census reflects changes in society since 2001 and asks questions to help paint a detailed demographic picture of England and Wales, as it stands on census day, 27 March.
Data collected by the census is used to provide statistical outputs which central government uses to plan and allocate local authority services funding, which local authorities themselves use to identify and meet the needs of their local communities. Other organisations that use census data include healthcare organisations, community groups and businesses; the questionnaires, including people's personal information, are kept confidential for 100 years before being released to the public, providing an important source of information for historical and genealogy research. The 2011 census for England and Wales included around 25 million households. Questionnaires were posted out to all households, using a national address register compiled by the Office for National Statistics with the help of local authorities through comparisons of the National Land and Property Gazetteer and the Royal Mail and Ordnance Survey national address products. People could complete and submit their questionnaire online, or fill it in on paper and post it back in a pre-addressed envelope.
Guidance was provided online and through the census helpline. Completed questionnaires were electronically tracked and field staff followed up with households that did not return a questionnaire. Special arrangements were made to count people living in communal establishments such as. In these cases field staff delivered and collected questionnaires and, where needed, provided advice or assistance in completing the questionnaire. There was a legal requirement to complete the 2011 census questionnaire, under the terms of the Census Act 1920; as at 27 March 2011 everyone who had lived or intended to live in the country for three months or more was required to complete a questionnaire. Failure to return a completed questionnaire could lead to a criminal record. Lockheed Martin UK, the UK arm of US-based aerospace, technology company Lockheed Martin was awarded the contract to provide services for the census comprising questionnaire printing, a customer contact centre and data capture and processing.
The contract is valued at £150 million one third of the total £1 million census budget
Town
A town is a human settlement. Towns are larger than villages but smaller than cities, though the criteria to distinguish them vary between different parts of the world; the word town shares an origin with the German word Zaun, the Dutch word tuin, the Old Norse tun. The German word Zaun comes closest to the original meaning of the word: a fence of any material. An early borrowing from Celtic *dunom. In English and Dutch, the meaning of the word took on the sense of the space which these fences enclosed. In England, a town was a small community that could not afford or was not allowed to build walls or other larger fortifications, built a palisade or stockade instead. In the Netherlands, this space was a garden, more those of the wealthy, which had a high fence or a wall around them. In Old Norse tun means a place between farmhouses, the word is still used in a similar meaning in modern Norwegian. In Old English and Early and Middle Scots, the words ton, etc. could refer to diverse kinds of settlements from agricultural estates and holdings picking up the Norse sense at one end of the scale, to fortified municipalities.
If there was any distinction between toun and burgh as claimed by some, it did not last in practice as burghs and touns developed. For example, "Edina Burgh" or "Edinburgh" was built around a fort and came to have a defensive wall. In some cases, "town" is an alternative name for "city" or "village". Sometimes, the word "town" is short for "township". In general, today towns can be differentiated from townships, villages, or hamlets on the basis of their economic character, in that most of a town's population will tend to derive their living from manufacturing industry and public services rather than primary industry such as agriculture or related activities. A place's population size is not a reliable determinant of urban character. In many areas of the world, e.g. in India at least until recent times, a large village might contain several times as many people as a small town. In the United Kingdom, there are historical cities; the modern phenomenon of extensive suburban growth, satellite urban development, migration of city dwellers to villages has further complicated the definition of towns, creating communities urban in their economic and cultural characteristics but lacking other characteristics of urban localities.
Some forms of non-rural settlement, such as temporary mining locations, may be non-rural, but have at best a questionable claim to be called a town. Towns exist as distinct governmental units, with defined borders and some or all of the appurtenances of local government. In the United States these are referred to as "incorporated towns". In other cases the town lacks its own governance and is said to be "unincorporated". Note that the existence of an unincorporated town may be set out by other means, e.g. zoning districts. In the case of some planned communities, the town exists in the form of covenants on the properties within the town; the United States Census identifies many census-designated places by the names of unincorporated towns which lie within them. The distinction between a town and a city depends on the approach: a city may be an administrative entity, granted that designation by law, but in informal usage, the term is used to denote an urban locality of a particular size or importance: whereas a medieval city may have possessed as few as 10,000 inhabitants, today some consider an urban place of fewer than 100,000 as a town though there are many designated cities that are much smaller than that.
Australian geographer Thomas Griffith Taylor proposed a classification of towns based on their age and pattern of land use. He identified five types of town: Infantile towns, with no clear zoning Juvenile towns, which have developed an area of shops Adolescent towns, where factories have started to appear Early mature towns, with a separate area of high-class housing Mature towns, with defined industrial and various types of residential area In Afghanistan and cities are known as shār; as the country is an rural society with few larger settlements, with major cities never holding more than a few hundred thousand inhabitants before the 2000s, the lingual tradition of the country does not discriminate between towns and cities. In Albania "qytezë" means town, similar with the word for city. Although there is no official use of the term for any settlement. In Albanian "qytezë" means "small city" or "new city", while in ancient times "small residential center within the walls of a castle"; the center is a population group, larger than a village, smaller than a city.
Though the village is bigger than a hamlet In Australia, towns or "urban centre localities" are understood to be those centers of population not formally declared to be cities and having a population in excess of about 200 people. Centers too small to be called towns are understood to be a township. In addition, some local government entities are styled as towns in Queensland, Western Australia and the Northern Territory, before the statewide amalgamations of th
East Midlands
The East Midlands is one of nine official regions of England at the first level of NUTS for statistical purposes. It consists of Derbyshire, Lincolnshire, Northamptonshire and Rutland; the region has an area of 15,627 km2, with a population over 4.5 million in 2011. There are five main urban centres, Leicester, Lincoln and Nottingham. Others include Boston, Chesterfield, Grantham, Kettering, Mansfield, Newark-on-Trent and Wellingborough. Relative proximity to London and its position on the national motorway and trunk road networks help the East Midlands to thrive as an economic hub. Nottingham and Leicester are each classified as a sufficiency-level world city by the Globalization and World Cities Research Network; the region is served by East Midlands Airport, which lies between Derby and Nottingham. The high point at 636 m is Kinder Scout, in the Peak District of the southern Pennines in northwest Derbyshire near Glossop. Other upland, hilly areas of 95 to 280 m in altitude, together with lakes and reservoirs, rise in and around the Charnwood Forest north of Leicester, in the Lincolnshire Wolds.
The region's major rivers, the Nene, the Soar, the Trent and the Welland, flow in a northeasterly direction towards the Humber and the Wash. The Derwent, rises in the High Peak before flowing south to join the Trent some 2 miles before its conflux with the Soar; the centre of the East Midlands area lies between Bingham and Bottesford, Leicestershire. The geographical centre of England lies in Higham on the Hill in west Leicestershire, close to the boundary between the Leicestershire and Warwickshire; some 88 per cent of the land is rural in character, although agriculture accounts for less than three per cent of the region's jobs. Lincolnshire is the only maritime county of the six, with a true North Sea coastline of about 30 miles due to the protection afforded by Spurn Head and the North Norfolk foreshore. Church Flatts Farm in Coton in the Elms, South Derbyshire, is the furthest place from the sea in the UK. In April 1936 the first Ordnance Survey trig point was sited at Cold Ashby in Northamptonshire.
The Royal Society of Wildlife Trusts and The Wildlife Trusts are based next to the River Trent and Newark Castle railway station. The National Centre for Earth Observation is at the University of Leicester; the region is home to large quantities of limestone, the East Midlands Oil Province. Charnwood Forest is noted for its abundant levels of volcanic rock, estimated to be 600 million years old. A quarter of the UK's cement is manufactured in the region, at three sites in Hope and Tunstead in Derbyshire, Ketton Cement Works in Rutland. Of the aggregates produced in the region, 25 per cent are from Derbyshire and four per cent from Leicestershire. Lincolnshire and Nottinghamshire each produce around 30 per cent of the region's sand and gravel output. Barwell in Leicestershire was the site of Britain's largest meteorite on 24 December 1965; the 2008 Lincolnshire earthquake was 5.2 in magnitude. Areas of the East Midlands designated by the East Midlands Biodiversity Partnership as Biodiversity Conservation Areas include: Charnwood Forest Coversand Heaths Derbyshire Peak Fringe and Lower Derwent Humberhead Levels Leighland Forest The Lincolnshire Limewoods and Heaths The Lincolnshire coast The Peak District Rockingham Forest Sherwood Forest Rutland, SW Lincolnshire and N Northamptonshire The Wash Areas of the East Midlands designated by the East Midlands Biodiversity Partnership as Biodiversity Enhancement Areas include: The Coalfields The Daventry Grasslands The Fens The Lincolnshire Coastal Grazing Marshes The Lincolnshire Wolds The National Forest The Yardley-Whittlewood RidgeTwo of the nationally designated Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty are: The Peak District The Lincolnshire Wolds Several towns in the southern part of the region, including Market Harborough, Rothwell, Kettering, Thrapston and Stamford, lie within the boundaries of what was once Rockingham Forest – designated a royal forest by William the Conqueror and was long hunted by English kings and queens.
The National Forest is an environmental project in central England run by The National Forest Company. Areas of north Leicestershire, south Derbyshire and south-east Staffordshire covering around 200 square miles are being planted in an attempt to blend ancient woodland with new plantings, it stretches from the western outskirts of Leicester in the east to Burton upon Trent in the west, is planned to link the ancient forests of Needwood and Charnwood. Sherwood Forest in Nottinghamshire attracts many visitors, is best known for its ties with the legend of Robin Hood. Regional financial funding decisions for the East Midlands are taken by East Midlands Councils, based in Melton Mowbray. East Midlands Councils is an unelected body made up of representatives of local government in the region; the defunct East Midlands Development Agency was headquartered next to the BBC's East Midlands office in Nottingham and made financial decisions regarding economic development in the region. Since the Conservative-Lib Dem coalition government launched its austerity programme after the 2010 general election, regional bodies such as those have been devolved to smaller groups now on a county level.
As a region today, there is no overriding body with significant financial or planning powers for the East Midlands. The East Midlands' largest settlements are Leicester, Derby, Chesterfield, Mansfield and Kettering. Leicester is the largest
Lincolnshire
Lincolnshire is a county in eastern England, with a long coastline on the North Sea to the east. It borders Norfolk to the south east, Cambridgeshire to the south, Rutland to the south west and Nottinghamshire to the west, South Yorkshire to the north west, the East Riding of Yorkshire to the north, it borders Northamptonshire in the south for just 20 yards, England's shortest county boundary. The county town is the city of Lincoln; the ceremonial county of Lincolnshire is composed of the non-metropolitan county of Lincolnshire and the area covered by the unitary authorities of North Lincolnshire and North East Lincolnshire. Part of the ceremonial county is in the Yorkshire and the Humber region of England, most is in the East Midlands region; the county is the second-largest of the English ceremonial counties and one, predominantly agricultural in land use. The county is fourth-largest of the two-tier counties, as the unitary authorities of North Lincolnshire and North East Lincolnshire are not included.
The county has several geographical sub-regions, including the rolling chalk hills of the Lincolnshire Wolds. In the southeast are the Lincolnshire Fens, the Carrs, the industrial Humber Estuary and North Sea coast around Grimsby and Scunthorpe, in the southwest of the county, the Kesteven Uplands, comprising rolling limestone hills in the district of South Kesteven. During the Pre-Roman times most of Lincolnshire was inhabited by the Brythonic Corieltauvi people; the Iceni covered the area around modern day Grimsby. The language of the area at that time would have been the precursor to modern Welsh; the name Lincoln derives from the old Welsh ‘Lindo’ meaning Lake. Modern-day Lincolnshire is derived from the merging of the territory of the Brythonic Kingdom of Lindsey with that controlled by the Danelaw borough of Stamford. For some time the entire county was called "Lindsey", it is recorded as such in the 11th-century Domesday Book; the name Lindsey was applied to the northern core, around Lincoln.
This emerged as one of the three Parts of Lincolnshire, along with the Parts of Holland in the south east, the Parts of Kesteven in the south west, which each had separate Quarter Sessions as their county administrations. In 1888 when county councils were set up, Lindsey and Kesteven each received separate ones; these survived until 1974, when Holland and most of Lindsey were unified into Lincolnshire. The northern part of Lindsey, including Scunthorpe Municipal Borough and Grimsby County Borough, was incorporated into the newly formed non-metropolitan county of Humberside, along with most of the East Riding of Yorkshire. A local government reform in 1996 abolished Humberside; the land south of the Humber Estuary was allocated to the unitary authorities of North Lincolnshire and North East Lincolnshire. These two areas became part of Lincolnshire for ceremonial purposes, such as the Lord-Lieutenancy, but are not covered by the Lincolnshire police; the remaining districts of Lincolnshire are Boston, East Lindsey, North Kesteven, South Holland, South Kesteven, West Lindsey.
They are part of the East Midlands region. The area was shaken by the 27 February 2008 Lincolnshire earthquake, reaching between 4.7 and 5.3 on the Richter magnitude scale. Lincolnshire is home to Woolsthorpe Manor and home of Sir Isaac Newton, he attended Grantham. Its library has preserved his signature, carved into a window sill. Bedrock in Lincolnshire features Cretaceous chalk. For much of prehistory, Lincolnshire was under tropical seas, most fossils found in the county are marine invertebrates. Marine vertebrates have been found including ichthyosaurus and plesiosaur; the highest point in Lincolnshire is Wolds Top, at Normanby le Wold. Some parts of the Fens may be below sea level; the nearest mountains are in Derbyshire. The biggest rivers in Lincolnshire are the Trent, running northwards from Staffordshire up the western edge of the county to the Humber estuary, the Witham, which begins in Lincolnshire at South Witham and runs for 132 kilometres through the middle of the county emptying into the North Sea at The Wash.
The Humber estuary, on Lincolnshire's northern border, is fed by the River Ouse. The Wash is the mouth of the Welland, the Nene and the Great Ouse. Lincolnshire's geography is varied, but consists of several distinct areas: Lincolnshire Wolds - area of rolling hills in the north east of the county designated an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty The Fens - dominating the south east quarter of the county The Marshes - running along the coast of the county The Lincoln Edge/Cliff - limestone escarpment running north-south along the western half of the countyLincolnshire's most well-known nature reserves include Gibraltar Point National Nature Reserve, Whisby Nature Park Local Nature Reserve, Donna Nook National Nature Reserve, RSPB Frampton Marsh and the Humberhead Peatlands National Nature Reserve. Although the Lincolnshire countryside is intensively farmed, there are many biodiverse wetland areas, as well as rare limewood forests. Much of the county was once wet. From bones, we can tell that animal species found in Lincolnshire include wooly mammoth, wooly rhinoceros, wild horse, wild boar and beaver.
Species which have returned to Lincolnshire after extirpation include little egret, Eurasian spoonbill, European otter and red kite. This is a chart
Lloyds Bank
Lloyds Bank plc is a British retail and commercial bank with branches across England and Wales. It has traditionally been considered one of the "Big Four" clearing banks; the bank was founded in Birmingham in 1765. It expanded during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and took over a number of smaller banking companies. In 1995 it merged with the Trustee Savings Bank and traded as Lloyds TSB Bank plc between 1999 and 2013; the bank is the principal subsidiary of Lloyds Banking Group, formed in January 2009 by the acquisition of HBOS by the then-Lloyds TSB Group. That year, following the UK bank rescue package, the British Government took a 43.4% stake in Lloyds Banking Group. As a condition imposed by the European Commission regarding state aid, the group announced that it would create a new standalone retail banking business, made up of a number of Lloyds TSB branches and those of Cheltenham & Gloucester; the new business began operations on 9 September 2013 under the TSB brand. Lloyds TSB was subsequently renamed Lloyds Bank on 23 September 2013.
On 17 March 2017, the British Government confirmed its remaining shares in Lloyds Banking Group had been sold. Lloyds Bank is the largest retail bank in Britain, has an extensive network of branches and ATM in England and Wales and offers 24-hour telephone and online banking services; as of 2012 it has 16 million small business accounts. It has other offices in Wales and Scotland, it operates a number of office complex, brand headquarters and data centres in Yorkshire including Leeds and Halifax. The origins of Lloyds Bank date from 1765, when button maker John Taylor and Quaker iron producer and dealer Sampson Lloyd set up a private banking business in Dale End, Birmingham; the first branch office opened in Oldbury, some six miles west of Birmingham, in 1864. The symbol adopted by Taylors and Lloyds was the beehive, representing hard work; the black horse regardant device dates from 1677, when Humphrey Stokes adopted it as sign for his shop. Stokes was a goldsmith and "keeper of the running cashes" and the business became part of Barnett, Hoares & Co.
When Lloyds took over that bank in 1884, it continued to trade "at the sign of the black horse". The association with the Tailor family ended in 1852 and, in 1865, Lloyds & Co. converted into a joint-stock company known as Lloyds Banking Company Ltd. The first report of the company in 1865 stated:LLOYDS BANKING COMPANY LIMITED – Authorized Capital £2,000,000. FOUNDED ON The Private Banks of Messrs. Lloyds & Co. and Messrs. Moilliet and Sons, with-which have subsequently been amalgamated the Banks of Messrs. P. H. Williams and Messrs. Stevenson, Salt, & Co. Stafford and Lichfield. Your Directors have the satisfaction to report that they have concluded an agreement with the well-known and old-established firm of Messrs. Stevenson, Salt & Company for the amalgamation with this Company of their Banking Business at Stafford, Lichfield and Eccleshall, that this agreement has had the unanimous approval of the Extraordinary General Meeting held on 31st January last, it will be again submitted to you for final confirmation after the close of the Ordinary General Meeting.
TIMOTHY KENRICK, Chairman. BIRMINGHAM, 9th February 1866Two sons of the original partners followed in their footsteps by joining the established merchant bank Barnett, Hoares & Co. which became Barnetts, Hoares and Lloyd— based in Lombard Street, London. This became absorbed into the original Lloyds Banking Company, which became Lloyds and Bosanquets Bank Ltd. in 1884. And Lloyds Bank Limited in 1889. Through a series of mergers, including Cunliffe, Brooks in 1900, the Wilts. and Dorset Bank in 1914 and, by far the largest, the Capital and Counties Bank in 1918, Lloyds emerged to become one of the "Big Four" clearing banks in the United Kingdom. By 1923, Lloyds Bank had made some 50 takeovers, one of, the last private firm to issue its own banknotes—Fox and Company of Wellington, Somerset. Today, the Bank of England has a monopoly of banknote issue in Wales. In 2011, the company founded SGH Martineau LLP. In 1968, a failed attempt at merger with Barclays and Martins Bank was deemed to be against the public interest by the Monopolies and Mergers Commission.
Barclays acquired Martins the following year. In 1972, Lloyds Bank was a founding member of the Joint Credit Card Company which launched the Access credit card; that same year it introduced Cashpoint, the first online cash machine to use plastic cards with a magnetic stripe. In popular use, the Cashpoint trademark has become a generic term for an ATM in the United Kingdom. Under the leadership of Sir Brian Pitman between 1984 and 1997, the bank's business focus was narrowed and it reacted to disastrous lending to South American states by trimming its overseas businesses and seeking growth through mergers with other UK banks. During this period, Pitman tried unsuccessfully to acquire The Royal Bank of Scotland in 1984, Standard Chartered in 1986, Midland Bank in 1992. Lloyds Bank International merged into Lloyds Bank in 1986, since there was no longer an advantage in operating separately. In 1988, Lloyds merged five of its businesses with the Abbey Life Insurance Company to create Lloyds Abbey Life.
The bank merged first with the newly demutualised Cheltenham & Gloucester Building Society with the TSB Group
Yorkshire Building Society
The Yorkshire Building Society is the third largest building society in the UK, with its headquarters in Bradford, West Yorkshire, England. It is a member of the Building Societies Association; the society owns the Chelsea Building Society and Norwich and Peterborough Building Society, as well as Accord Mortgages and the savings business of Egg, which are referred to as the Yorkshire Building Society Group. Collectively the group employs services 3 million members; the society provides financial services both directly and through a 143-strong branch network and 99 associated agencies across the UK. Despite changes in the industry in recent years, Yorkshire Building Society remains one of the major mutual building societies in Britain - a review in 1995 confirmed that their mutual status was important to them, so that they remain answerable to their members, rather than outside shareholders. In 1864, the Huddersfield Equitable Permanent Benefit Building Society was founded in Huddersfield, expansion through a series of agreed mergers, predominantly with the Bradford Permanent Building Society in 1975, has seen it evolve into the national building society that it is today.
The current name came into use in 1982, following the merger of the Huddersfield & Bradford Building Society and the West Yorkshire Building Society. Yorkshire Building Society has a mortgage subsidiary company, Accord. In August 2011 it announced that it was closing Yorkshire Guernsey; the Yorkshire took over the Sussex-based Haywards Heath Building Society in 1992, in an effort to develop a southern based branch presence. In 2001, the Society merged with the Gainsborough Building Society. In 2008, the Yorkshire merged with the Barnsley Building Society which had become a victim of the Icelandic banking crisis. After learning lessons from previous mergers, with the Barnsley being a larger organisation with a well-established brand, the Yorkshire decided to keep the Barnsley brand in order to keep existing customers and use it as another route to market their products. In 2009, the Yorkshire noted; the following day it was announced. The merger with Chelsea Building Society, which retained its own branding until 2016, was completed in 2010.
Chelsea branded services are now available online and by telephone only. The ninth largest building society at the time and Peterborough, entered into merger discussions with the Society on 19 March 2011. Following due diligence by the Yorkshire board, N&P members voted in favour of the proposal on 22 August. FSA approval followed on 23 September and the transfer of engagements was completed on 1 November. With no geographical overlap, the N&P name was retained as a separate and distinct brand. On 25 July 2011, the Yorkshire announced it was buying the Egg savings and mortgage business from Citi in a deal worth £2.5 billion. Use of the Egg trade marks by Yorkshire Building Society is under licence from Egg Banking Plc which provides any residual Egg savings products that were not transferred to the Yorkshire and any Egg loans products that were not sold to Britannica Recoveries S.a.r.l. In 1993, the former Hammonds Sauce Works Band was renamed as the Yorkshire Building Society Band; the building society supported the main band and the YBS Hawley Band and YBS Juniors.
The building society ceased its sponsorship in December 2004 although the YBS initials were retained in the band's name until 2008. From January 2009, the band was renamed the Hammonds Saltaire Band. List of banks List of banks in United Kingdom Official website
Alford
Media related to Alford, Lincolnshire at Wikimedia Commons
