1 Pound Westminster Bank

Westminster Bank Limited was itself the product of a 1923 merger of several older English provincial banks, and this note series spans the period in which the bank was consolidating its branch network aggressively across England and Wales. Waterlow & Sons had a long relationship with British commercial banks, and the quality of their intaglio work shows in the plate registration across the series.

Commercial bank notes in England were already a dying instrument by 1929 — the Bank of England had been tightening its monopoly on note issue for decades, and by the time this series closed in 1955, private English banknote circulation had effectively ended. Westminster Bank itself was absorbed into NatWest in 1970.