Finsbury Bank for Savings
Instituted A.D. 1816. Erected A.D. 1840.
Now a private house.
THE FINSBURY BANK FOR SAVINGS IS NOW UNDER NEW MANAGEMENT
Manager’s Entrance
Write to the manager manager@Depositors’ Entrance
Find it on the map Google Maps See it today Street ViewBest admired from the pavement.
The Archive
Read its history Twelve chapters, 1566 to today Meet the architect Alfred Bartholomew, 1801–1845Address
Finsbury Bank for Savings, 18½ Sekforde Street, London, EC1R 0HLSchedule of revisions
History of the building
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1816
Founded as a savings bank for “tradesmen, mechanics, labourers, servants, and others”.
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1839–41
Designed by Alfred Bartholomew, “son of a Clerkenwell watchmaker”; it was “his only significant architectural work”, and he “paid for some of the external decorations himself”. Begun about May 1839, it was in full operation by April 1841.
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1845
“Charles Dickens was an early depositor of trust funds in October 1845”.
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1928
Altered, with steel windows and internal re-ordering.
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1942
Merged with the London Savings Bank to form the London Trustee Savings Bank.
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1960s–90s
The bank closes in the 1960s and the building becomes offices; in the mid-1990s it is converted into one dwelling.
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2021–22
The front is repainted to Bartholomew’s own specification, in Portland stone and purple brown, and the entrance lettering is reinstated over the two end bays.
Quotations from the Survey of London, vol. 46.
The full history Twelve chapters, with notes and sourcesThe bank in 1844
The same two entrance inscriptions as today: the 2021 lettering reinstates the original.