50 Pounds Ulster Bank

Ulster Bank's wartime £50 notes occupy an unusual position in Northern Irish private bank issues. The denomination itself was never a workhorse of commerce — a £50 note in the early 1940s represented a substantial sum well beyond routine retail use, and these circulated almost entirely between businesses and financial institutions. Survival rates are poor not because of heavy handling but because large-denomination commercial notes were routinely destroyed upon return to the bank rather than reissued.

Charles Skipper & East had a long relationship with Irish private banks stretching back decades before this series, which is partly why the London firm continued to receive contracts even as wartime conditions complicated transatlantic and cross-channel logistics.