Lives of the First World War

known 1926

After the War, Barclays erected memorial panels in the banking hall at Head Office at 54 Lombard Street. The panels were headed “In honoured memory of the members of Barclays Bank Limited who gave their lives for King and country during the war A. D. 1914-1919”. Pictures of them were published in the first official history of Barclays in 1926, and posters of them were also made. The panels included the name B H Penfold. After WW2 it was decided that the permanent official Barclays memorial should be an illuminated inscribed book of remembrance, one for each war. A Staff Circular issued in 1951 said, “The Staff War Memorial Committee recommended that the permanent memorial should take the form of books of remembrance, which would be suitably housed in the new building at Head Office. The management, in accepting this recommendation, arranged that in the meantime the names of the fallen in both world wars should be recorded on panels….which have now been placed on the walls in the Large Hall at Head Office.” The books were duly completed by 1960 and put in purpose-built wall cases at 54 Lombard Street, replacing the panels. When the head office was rebuilt in the 1990s, the books were put on display in the new building, and when the head office moved in 2005 to 1 Churchill Place, Canary Wharf, the books were put on display in cases there. In 2008 Barclays commissioned new stone tablets to accompany the memorial books, and these are also on display at Churchill Place.

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