Fox, Fowler & Co Bank, Wellington

Fox, Fowler & Co was the last private bank in England to issue its own banknotes.  The bank was founded as Fox & Co in 1787 by Quaker Thomas Fox, who had just established a company in Wellington, which made woollen cloth.  The bank was initially used as a way to transfer funds between suppliers and customers.  It was also used by the employees of the woollen mill for their wages and savings.  Fox & Co issued their own banknotes for the first time in 1787.

In the 1870s the banking and woollen cloth parts of the business were separated.  The banking side then expanded and opened branches in towns across Somerset and Devon.  

The Bank Charter Act of 1844 banned new banks from issuing notes.  Those banks already doing so, were allowed to continue, but only up to the amount that they had circulating in 1844.  When banks merged after 1844, they lost the right to issue banknotes.  The number of banks issuing banknotes gradually declined, as banks merged or banks gave up the right to issue banknotes voluntarily.

In 1879 the bank was renamed Fox, Fowler & Co.  It continued to grow and took over several smaller private banks in the south west of England.  In 1885 the Wellington branch moved to a new purpose-built bank in Fore Street.

Fox, Fowler & Co had 55 or 56 branches by 1921.  At this point the Fox family decided to concentrate on their other business interests. They agreed that Lloyds Bank should take over their banking interests and Fox, Fowler & Co lost their right to issue banknotes at this point.  The building at 27 Fore Street in Wellington remained a branch of Lloyds Bank until March 2024, when it was closed down.

Fox, Fowler & Co/Lloyds Bank branch at 27 Fore Street, Wellington

Plaque on 27 Fore Street, Wellington

Walter Bagehot of Langport

Walter Bagehot was born in Langport on 3rd February 1826.  He became an economist and political analyst and he was one of the most influential journalists in the mid-Victorian period. His parents were Thomas Watson Bagehot and Edith Stuckey.  Several generations of Walter's father's family had been general merchants and his mother's uncle, Vincent Stuckey, was in charge of the largest bank in the West of England.

He attended Langport Grammar School and at the age of 13 he was sent to Bristol College.  There he learnt about mathematics, philosophy, literature, natural sciences and the classics. He then attended University College London.  While there he made several long-term friends, including the poet Arthur Hugh Clough, Richard Holt Hutton (who later became the editor of The Spectator), lawyer and diarist Henry Crabb Robinson and the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge.  He graduated with first class honours in 1846 and was awarded a masters degree in 1848, along with the university's gold medal in moral and intellectual philosophy.

Walter then studied law for 3 years but didn't like it.  He was in Paris in 1851 at the time of Louis Napoleon's coup d'etat and wrote a supportive article about it.  This convinced him that he could write and he produced many literary essays, studies of leading political figures and articles about economics while working for Stuckey's Bank.  These were noticed by James Wilson, who was an MP, financial secretary to the treasury in Lord Palmerston and founder of The Economist magazine.  He got to know James Wilson's eldest daughter Eliza and he married her in April 1858.  After their marriage they lived near Clevedon and later in London.  They had no children.

By 1860 Walter was manager of the Bristol branch of Stuckey's Bank.  During this year James Wilson died in India and Walter gained control of The Economist. For the next 17 years he wrote the main article every week for the magazine and transformed it into one of the world's most important financial and political publications.

Walter Bagehot described himself as a conservative liberal.  He believed that rapid urbanisation and industrialisation were creating social problems in Britain.  He also took a great interest in international affairs.  In 1867 he published a book entitled The English Constitution.  In it he examined how the British government really operated and in whose hands true power was held.  He was one of the first people to observe the power of the Cabinet.  He was friends with both the Liberal William Ewart Gladstone and the Conservative Lord Carnarvon.  He tried unsuccessfully to get elected as an MP for Manchester, Bridgwater and London University (he was a poor public speaker).

In 1873 Walter Bagehot published Lombard Street. This publication argued for a larger central reserve to be controlled by the Bank of England.  However, it also contained the beginnings of the modern theory of central banking and exchange control.

Walter Bagehot's health began to worsen in the 1870s.  He suffered from recurrent respiratory infections and migraines and his vision and heart began to fail.  On 24th March 1877 he died of a lung infection while visiting his father at Herd's Hill near Curry Rivel.  He was buried in the family grave at All Saints' Church in Langport.

Bank House, Cheapside where Walter Bagehot was born

Plaque commemorating Walter Bagehot above the front door of Bank House

The Walter Bagehot Memorial Window, 

All Saints' Church, Langport

This window was commissioned by Walter's widow, Eliza.  It was designed by Hugh Arthur Kennedy and was installed in late 1877.  The inscription at the bottom is "In honor of God & loving memory of Walter son of Thomas Watson & Edith Bagehot of Herds Hill.  He died March XXIV MDCCCLXXVII aged LI. Erected by his wife Eliza Bagehot."

Walter Bagehot's grave in the churchyard of All Saints' Church, Langport

Walter Bagehot's gravestone

Bow Wharf Warehouse, Langport

This was built by the Parrett Navigation Company, which was owned by Vincent Stuckey and Walter Bagehot

Thomas Poole of Nether Stowey

Thomas Poole was born in Nether Stowey on 14th November 1766.  His father Thomas was a tanner and farmer.  He wanted his son to carry on his tanning business when he died, so he denied him a proper education and sent him to work as an apprentice in the tanyard from an early age.  Thomas junior educated himself and taught himself Latin and French.  In 1791 he represented the west country at a tanners meeting in London and was elected by them to speak to William Pitt about the distressed state of the tanning industry.  He returned from London as a supporter of the French Revolution. 

In 1793 Poole established the Nether Stowey Book Society. The members of the group met at The Globe Inn and bought books and exchanged books.

Thomas Poole was introduced to Samuel Taylor Coleridge for the first time in August 1794 by his relative Henry Poole of Stogursey, who brought him to Thomas's house in Castle Street.  Coleridge was on a walking tour of Somerset with the poet Robert Southey.  Thomas and Coleridge became great friends.

In 1795 there was hardship in Nether Stowey when the price of wheat increased rapidly due to the war with France.  Poole, his mother and aunt created new recipes for cheaper loaves of bread e.g. using a mixture of wheat, barley, beans and potatoes or turnips.  In 1796 Poole built a new barkhouse in Tanyard Lane.

Coleridge asked Poole to find him a house in Nether Stowey and on 1st January 1797 he moved into a house on Lime Street in Nether Stowey with his wife Sara and their baby son Hartley. In July 1797 Poole arranged for William and Dorothy Wordsworth to rent Alfoxton House on the edge of Holford.   Also in 1797 Poole met the Staffordshire potters Josiah and Tom Wedgwood and he and Josiah became lifelong friends.  Through his friendship with Coleridge and Wordsworth, Poole met several other influential people of his day: the essayist and poet Charles Lamb; the radical speaker, writer, poet, painter and political reformer John Thelwell; the essayist, critic and philosopher William Hazlitt.

Poole met the scientist and inventor of the miners' safety lamp, Humphry Davy in 1799 and Davy later became a regular visitor to Nether Stowey.

Poole went on a tour of Europe in 1802.  In Paris he met the revolutionary and writer Thomas Paine (author of The Rights of Man) and was also presented to Napoleon Bonaparte. In the same year he met the civil servant John Rickman in London and in 1804 he compiled statistics for Rickman that were to be used to implement the poor laws.

In 1806 Poole founded the Nether Stowey Female Friendly Society.  Members paid what they could afford and in return they received financial support when they were sick, gave birth, were widowed or in their old age. Poole met the essayist Thomas de Quincey in 1807.

In 1807 Thomas tried unsuccessfully to reopen the Dodington copper mine, which had closed down in 1891.  He tried again in 1816 and built two new engine houses but the mine closed for the last time in 1821.

Poole donated a piece of land and paid for the building of a village school in Nether Stowey in 1812-13.  The school was large enough to educate up to 200 local children.  It was used as a school until 1979 when a new one was built and the building now houses the public library.

From 1814 until his death, Poole was a justice of the peace for Somerset.  

To encourage local people to save money and give them access to banking services, Thomas founded the Quantock Savings Bank in Lime Street, Nether Stowey in 1817.  The bank was in business until 1884.

Thomas Poole never married.  He lived in a house now called Poole House in Castle Street, Nether Stowey until 1802 when he gave the house to Thomas Ward, who was his partner in the tanning business.  Poole bought another house in St Mary Street, now called The Old House.  He lived there until his death.  He amassed a large library of books. Many people in the Nether Stowey area were suspicious of his radical views.  Although he was a great philanthropist and had many friends, he had a short temper and could sometimes be abrupt and overbearing.

Thomas Poole died of pleurisy in Nether Stowey on 8th September 1837 aged 72.  He was buried in the churchyard of St Mary's Church in the village.

Portrait of Thomas Poole in the Museum of Somerset in Taunton

Poole House in Castle Street, Nether Stowey

The Old House, St Mary Street, Nether Stowey

Quantock Savings Bank, Lime Street, Nether Stowey

Quantock Savings Bank, Lime Street, Nether Stowey

Old School, Nether Stowey (now the public library)

Thomas Poole's gravestone in St Mary's churchyard

Thomas Poole's Memorial inside St Mary's church

The Underground Bunker, Chard

In 1938 construction of a massive underground concrete bomb proof bunker began in the garden of the Westminster Bank in Fore Street, Chard.  It was built by Sir Robert McAlpine & Sons and was finished in August 1939.  Its purpose was to store duplicate copies of the bank's customer records, in case their headquarters at Threadneedle Street in London was destroyed by a German bomb.  The emergency supply of bank notes for the Bank of England was also held there until 1943.  There is also speculation that the Crown Jewels were stored there during the Second World War, although this has never been confirmed.

The side of the bunker and its entrance can be seen from Combe Street Car Park.  However the bunker itself is very overgrown.

Entrance to the Bunker

 

Overgrown bunker from Combe Street Car Park