20 Pounds Commercial Bank of Scotland

The Commercial Bank of Scotland was one of the last major Scottish banks to retain fully independent note-issuing operations before the mid-20th century consolidation that eventually absorbed it into the National Commercial Bank in 1959. This £20 denomination sat at the upper end of everyday commercial use — high enough that most examples passing through merchant hands would have been handled carefully, yet the wartime years of this series brought unusual strain on note stocks as banking volume shifted dramatically.

Waterlow & Sons had a long relationship with Scottish chartered banks, producing work of consistently high intaglio quality. The P#S329 series is known to have relatively low surviving numbers at the £20 level, as higher-denomination notes were more frequently cancelled and retained by the issuing bank rather than released back into general circulation.