Sheffield & Rotherham Joint Stock Banking Co Ltd

Walkers, Eyre & Stanley was founded in 1792 as a banking partnership dominated by a family of local iron founders. From the outset the bank operated offices in both Sheffield and Rotherham and was also known as Sheffield & Rotherham Bank. It pursued a prudent and conservative policy, ploughing back profits, investing its capital in government stock and carefully controlling its private note issues. In 1829 it was renamed Walkers & Stanley and in 1836 the business was sold for £27,000 to a new joint-stock company, Sheffield & Rotherham Joint Stock Banking Co, which was established with seven directors, and Barclay, Bevan & Co (est. 1690), bankers of City of London, as their London agents. The bank grew rapidly, with a paid-up capital of £112,857 by 1847, opening branches in Bakewell (1837), Buxton, Cavendish Circus (1856), Dronfield (1873), Matlock Bridge (1877), Baslow (1892), Darley Dale (1893), Higher Buxton (1899), Parkgate (1899), Attercliffe (1902) and Winster (1904).

The business was not without problems, however, with major accounting deficiencies being discovered during the 1840s and bad debts soaring during the local commercial depression of the late 1870s. The bank issued notes from 1836 until 1907, and at the start of 1860 had £51,000 in circulation. In 1880 the business adopted limited liability, but it was clear that such a small provincial bank could not remain viable for much longer. In 1907, with a paid-up capital of £256,000, the bank was acquired by Williams Deacon's Bank Ltd of London and Manchester, which had a strong network of branches in the Manchester area and was looking to expand into South Yorkshire and North Derbyshire. The bank did not retain its separate identity after the acquisition, which was carried out by means of a transfer of shares, although its former directors continued to meet as a Sheffield Advisory Board for several years.

Branches: The bank opened twelve branches and sub-branches between 1792 and 1907, located in South Yorkshire and North Derbyshire. In 1907 twelve branches were operating.

Published histories

• Sheffield & Rotherham Bank: A banking bicentenary, 1792-1992 (Edinburgh: privately published by the Royal Bank of Scotland, 1992)
• Williams Deacon's, 1771-1970 (Manchester: privately published by Williams & Glyn’s Bank Ltd, 1971)

Our archive holdings

A summary list of our archival records of NatWest Group plc can be found on the Archives Hub website.