1 Pound Commercial Bank of Scotland

The Commercial Bank of Scotland was one of the last Scottish banks to retain genuinely independent note-issuing operations before the consolidation pressures of the mid-twentieth century took hold. Founded in Edinburgh in 1810 and absorbed into the National Commercial Bank of Scotland in 1959, it printed through Waterlow & Sons for much of its later issuing life — a London firm that handled a remarkable volume of colonial and commercial bank work during this period.

The seventeen-year span of this series, 1927–1944, bridges the Depression and the Second World War, during which Scottish banknote circulation actually increased as public confidence in the larger Scottish issuers held firm where English branch banking was sometimes viewed with suspicion.