1 Pound North of Scotland Bank

The North of Scotland Bank Limited was founded in Aberdeen in 1836 and operated as an independent Scottish bank until its absorption into the Clydesdale Bank in 1908 — meaning this note series was issued during the institution's final decades of independent existence. W. & A. K. Johnston were primarily known as cartographic and geographic publishers, and their Edinburgh press handled banknote printing as a secondary commercial operation, which was not unusual for Scottish printers of that period.

Scottish one-pound notes of this era circulated heavily in the northeast and were often used in agricultural wage payments, resulting in surviving examples frequently showing significant wear along horizontal fold lines.