Front page · Cosyford Savings Bank
A penny saved: the old bank on the high street opens its doors (and its vault) under new management
Hilda Tuppence sat at the counter next to Mavis Ledger for forty years. Now she’s showing a new cashier the ropes, and the queue for a savings book goes out of the door.
Every morning starts with the vault. The great round door in the back wall has a brass wheel the size of a cartwheel, and you drag it round and round until the bolts slide back and the whole thing swings open with a clank. Inside: gold bars, stacks of coins and money bags tied up with red string. Hilda says nobody has ever counted it all. She says it the way people say they have never been to the top of the church tower.
Then the customers come up to your window, and every one wants something different. Cash out of the account means pulling the drawer and tapping out notes and coins, $20s, $10s, $5s, $2s and $1s, until it adds up (the fewer the better, and too many can go back in the drawer). A child with a piggy bank wants a savings account of their very own, so you unscrew the plug in its tummy, shake it out over the counter, sweep the coins into stacks of ten and stamp their brand new savings book. Someone with a jar of change gets it tipped out and fed through the counting machine, which does not take kindly to buttons, bottle tops or sweets. Hand those back under the glass. And the grown-ups paying in want their notes counted, their passbook stamped square in the box, and your initials on the line.
The bank does rather well. The farm has a loan for its new combine, the record shop has one for a tour van, and the coffee comes over from The Little Grind. “Funny how everyone in Cosyford banks with us now,” says Hilda, polishing the brass. “Now that you own the place.” She would rather we didn’t print that.
