WITH work well underway on the conversion of the former Barclays Bank building in Lymm village centre, a special Memory Banks exhibition is set to open.
Situated on the corner of Bridgewater Street the former Barclays Bank building, which had been vacant for years and fallen into disrepair, is being transformed into new retail units.
While the bank may have provided an important service in its day, the building itself was deeply unpopular with many local people who felt it was inappropriate in its setting and something of an eyesore, says Alan Williams, from Lymm Heritage centre, which is set to launch a “Memory bank” exhibition. It had become even worse since the bank closed and had become an easy target for fly posters.
Building work in progress at the former bank
Alan says the general opinion of the conversion seems to be a big “thumbs up” with a design that harks back to earlier days and blends far more successfully with its surroundings. And while residents are looking forward to see who sets up businesses there, Lymm Heritage Centre is marking the occasion of the work’s completion by telling the story of the site over the past two hundred years, from the days when it was a wheelwrights workshop with the Lymm Poor House just across the road.
“Bridgewater Street is a microcosm of the development of the whole village and so many other similar places” said exhibition developer Alan. “Over the last two centuries the area has moved through phases of being occupied by tradesmen, then retailers and now services. Remarkably too, it was only forty years ago that local traders were banding together to fight the potential arrival of ‘yet another bank’. Now, of course there are none”.
The exhibition “Memory Banks” which opens on August 15th is at Lymm Heritage Centre, 1 Legh St WA13 0DA (open Thursday to Sunday 12-4). Admission is free.
“The Union Bank of Manchester opened in 1913 on the site that had previously been home to Shuttleworth’s the grocers.”
