Muck and brass (From The Northern Echo)
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Muck and brass
6:11pm Tuesday 13th December 2011 in Features
It really shouldn’t happen to a bank manager… Sharon Griffiths enjoys the James Herriot-style reminiscences of the last of his breed in the dales.
THE last job Peter Nimmins undertook as a bank manager in Hawes was as timekeeper at the sheepdog trials. Ten years earlier, it had been one of his first jobs too.
“In one of the cupboards in my new office I’d found a very high-tech stopwatch that calculated times to 100th of a second,” he says.
It wasn’t something a bank manager normally needed and he had no idea why it was there, until one of his customers explained that it was traditional for the bank manager to be timekeeper at the sheepdog trials – and to treat the show committee and judges to a meal afterwards.
So even though Peter knew precious little about sheep, sheepdogs or the finer points of penning, there he was high up the dales, calling time on some of the country’s top experts.
“I found out later that a number of the spectators also had very high-tech stopwatches – including the wife of the man I’d judged as missing the time limit by just seconds...”
Welcome to the world of a country bank manager. It’s not much more than ten years since Peter – who lives in Middleton Tyas, near Richmond –retired, but the world of banking has changed utterly. “I must have been the last traditional Dales bank manager,” he says.
“Already things were changing. When I’d worked in Leyburn, for instance, they’d had 20 staff, now there are just two or three. Banks were being organised into groups, everything was becoming more specialised and centralised.
But up at the top of the Dale, I was out on a limb and could just get on with it.”
Unlike his counterparts in bigger towns, Peter was very much part of the local community.
Another thing he found in his office cupboard when he took over was a shelf of ten box files.
“Each one contained the treasurers’ books of local associations – the fishing club, tourist association, agricultural shows. It had always been the role of the bank manager to act as treasurer, to keep the books and attend all the meetings throughout the year.”
Sheepdog trials, fishing clubs, agricultural shows all became part of his everyday working life. As did handing out the prize money for the harness-racing, when the organisers provided him with a grand office – an old hen hut.
“There was a hatch at the front, covered with chicken wire as a security measure, and a plastic chair in the unlikely event I had a quiet spell. The facilities were adequate, but there was a small problem. Only a week or two before, my treasurer’s hut had been full of Rhode Island Red laying hens and the pungent aroma of their droppings still lingered and made the eyes water somewhat.”
Peter wasn’t even a country lad. Born in Durham, he’d gone to school in Low Fell, joined Martins bank and worked at branches all over County Durham. “Spennymoor, Ferryhill, Tow Law, Coxhoe…”
He particularly liked St John’s Chapel, right at the top of Weardale.
“It was a tiny office staffed by a manager and a boy where I took charge when the manager was on holiday,” he says. “At that time I was driving an old Mini van, but with snow tyres on it. I had no problem travelling up on the hard packed snow.
“Each morning we would load up the van with cash and the heavy hand-written ledgers and drive further up to Wearhead where we conducted business, returning to St John’s Chapel for the afternoon shift. In those days customers would wait outside, even in the snow, for their turn to be served if there was anyone else in the branch.”
While working in Sedgefield, he met his wife Jean (“She was working for the Post Office and used to come in with all the 2d coins from the phone box.”). Luckily, she was a farmer’s daughter, “so she was able to tell me a bit about country life,” says Peter.
Armed with knowledge of hogs, gimmers, sows and sucklers, and the significance of back end sales, Peter went to Leyburn, then Hawes. Not always stuck in the office, he was often out and about, negotiating gated farm tracks surrounded by bullocks, doing farm reviews in the snug warmth of a farmhouse kitchen or, less comfortably, in the damp chill of the room reserved solely for funerals and bank managers.
“But you really were part of the community, along with the doctor, the vet and the vicar. You met people when they were young and just opening a bank account and then you were with them through all the big things like weddings and bereavement,” says Peter.
“It was different from a big town, because in a place like the dales you really knew your customers.
Now everyone applying for a loan is credit- checked by computer and it’s either yes or no.
But we knew people, knew their circumstances and could tell those who could be relied on.
“The new way of doing things is hard lines on small traders – plumbers, decorators, one-man bands. It was much easier for us to help them, especially on a short-term basis. I think they find it much harder now.”
But despite the occasional bout of nostalgia, Peter has no wish to bring back the days of Captain Mainwaring-style bank managers.
“You can’t go back to the way it was because the world has changed so much. We were trained, for instance, in every aspect of banking. They were different times.”
THERE were still some things Peter wasn’t trained for – such as the time Prince Charles came to visit the tiny sheep show held at The Moorcock, right at the top of Wensleydale before it tumbles down into Cumbria.
“The chairman of the show committee was in his eighties and chairman in name only. I’d just arrived as treasurer and it fell to me to chair a host of meetings to pull everything together.
“The bank gave you training in lending and other skills, but I felt it should include training in running meetings – and how to run a Royal visit.”
All went well, of course, apart from the small matter of Prince Charles’s chair – and everyone else’s – gradually sliding down into the inevitable mud.
In between sheep shows, harness racing and royal visits, Peter also managed to conduct the more routine business of the bank. The notes he made in his big fat work diary have become the basis of his first slim volume of reminiscences – delightfully illustrated by Darlington student James Robson.
After Peter retired, his bank, like all the others became part of a group, so he probably was indeed the last Dales bank manager.
“I loved my work right up until the day I retired,” he says. “It really was the best job in the bank.”
• The Best Job in the Bank by Peter Nimmins, writing as Peter N James, is available for £5.99 from The Wensleydale Creamery and Pennine Gifts in Hawes, The Village Kitchen Askrigg and the village shop, Middleton Tyas. Or by emailing peter@nimmins.fsworld.co.uk
