Old style safe deposit boxes on external walls.

[LS1]

That would make the aerial view later than 1938 I would have thought as this pic taken then shows Providence Square (which was roughly where the roundabout at the intersection of Harrogate Road and the Ring Road is now) http://www.leodis.net/display.aspx?reso ... 0_22024172 during demolition and in the aerial view it looks like it's been/ being demolished.

[tyke bhoy]

That would make the aerial view later than 1938 I would have thought as this pic taken then shows Providence Square (which was roughly where the roundabout at the intersection of Harrogate Road and the Ring Road is now) http://www.leodis.net/display.aspx?reso ... 0_22024172 during demolition and in the aerial view it looks like it's been/ being demolished.

And this would put it before May 39 http://www.leodis.net/display.aspx?reso ... ifier=9175 when the roundabout was open but not visible in the aerial shots.

I took my advice and zoomed the aerial images. There is clearly a white building of similar shape to the bank on the corner of Shadwell Lane although it appears to only be single story. It therefore looks like the brick second floor on the Harrogate Road frontage may have been a sympathetic extension at a later date.

[Leodian]

Brunel kindly posted an image in this thread on August 20 2015 of an old style night safe at the old Yorkshire Bank on Kirkstall Road. It took me long enough but I finally got to see the safe during a walk along part of Kirkstall Road on January 31 2018. I have attached the close-up photo that I took of the safe and a photo showing its general location at what is currently a bar/restaurant.

It was very sunny when I took the photos but there were brief hail/wintry showers around, though disappointingly there did not seem to be any rainbows so no nicely photogenic ones of them (particularly if the nearby railway viaduct had also been in view). The very bright X-shape in the location photo is presumably a reflection off something that I did not notice when I took that photo.

OldNightSafeOldYorkshireBankSiteKirkstallRoadLeedsJan312018..jpg (102.45 KiB) Viewed 2319 times

OldNightSafeInWallBelowVivaCubaSignOldYorkshireBankKirkstallRoadLeedsJan312018..jpg (109.24 KiB) Viewed 2319 times

[Leodian]

It has taken me a long time (very much more than I would have guessed!) to post a new image but I finally got round on April 24 2025 to seeing the old Night Safe (presumably no longer in use) noted in the post by Happy Valley » Sat Aug 22, 2015 9:24 pm which has "One of the old style night safes should still be outside Lloyds bank in Morley, I believe that the bank is older than the Town Hall next to the bank, and is also a grade 2 listed building, so in theory one would think it shouldn’t really be in any real danger of getting removed or replaced". The safe is on the Wellington Street side of the juncton of that and Queen Street. The old bank is currently a Bar & Grill.

OldNightSafeAtWhatHadBeenLloydsBankMorleyApril242025..jpg (167.78 KiB) Viewed 57 times

[mhoulden]

There's a planning application to remove the cash machine aperture and other banking bits from Morley Natwest, so you might want to photograph them while you can: https://publicaccess.leeds.gov.uk/onlin ... UPVJBKOI00

I've got a work in progress to do a full list of all the banks in the 1984 Leeds telephone directory and put them on a Google map. From a local history point of view it says a lot about an area. There were enough people or a big enough employer for there to need a branch. There seem to be more branches of the Midland than any other bank, including Yorkshire Bank. Mergers mean that old banks are lost to time. Armley Town St used to have both Lloyds and (Leeds, Morley & Skyrac) TSB. There were probably more Martins banks than Barclays. It's taking a while because there a lot of them (~300) and some of the addresses don't exist any more.