5 Pounds Commercial Bank of Scotland

The Commercial Bank of Scotland's postwar £5 series was produced by Bradbury Wilkinson at their New Malden works, a firm that dominated Scottish commercial bank printing through much of the twentieth century. The dates 1947–1958 bracket a period of particular tension for Scottish private note issuers: the 1945 Banking Act debates and subsequent discussions through the early 1950s repeatedly threatened to curtail the ancient right of Scottish banks to issue their own currency, a right they ultimately retained.

The Commercial Bank itself ceased to exist as an independent entity in 1959, absorbed into the National Commercial Bank of Scotland — which makes the terminal date of this series essentially the last gasp of the issuer.