Lloyds Banking Group Archives

Who we are

Lloyds Banking Group Archives holds the key corporate and historical records of the Group and the brands it brought together when formed in 2009. These include:

Lloyds Bank: established as Taylors & Lloyds in Birmingham in 1765
Bank of Scotland: the first bank in Scotland, founded in 1695
Halifax: at one time the world’s largest building society, founded in 1852
Trustee Savings Banks: their origins can be traced to 1810 when the first self-supporting savings bank was opened in Ruthwell, Scotland
Scottish Widows: Scotland's oldest life assurance company, which began business in 1815

Our collections

Our collections reflect the role that banks and building societies have played in our society, both as financiers of trade and industry and as employers. The records include those of private and joint-stock banks, savings banks, building societies and insurance companies.

Our larger collections can include the following types of records:

Accounting and financial records
Advertising and marketing material - including promotional films and TV adverts
Architectural records
Banknotes and cheques
Branch records
Minutes
Photographs
Staff records

In total, we hold the records of nearly 400 institutions and individuals – you can find a complete listing on our website

At the moment details of only a relatively small number are available on the Archives Hub, though we are continuing to add more all the time.

As well as the familiar high street names, we also hold records of some more unusual enterprises:

Cox & Co., a firm which had been providing banking services to the British Army since 1758
Herries, Farquhar & Co, whose founder invented the traveller’s cheque
Records of the Scottish Indian Coffee Company, which was established in the late 19th century and owned a number of coffee (and later also tea) plantations in India
Records from the Eric Liddell Memorial Fund, established after the death of the famous athlete in 1945, to provide for his family and encourage amateur athletics

Using our archives for research

Our collections support a very wide range of research subjects. As you might expect, they are an invaluable resource for economic and financial historians. But social, military, architectural, local, and family historians have also found useful material.

Individual collections can provide an insight into the history of a particular company: its establishment, investments, staff, impact on local communities, failure, expansion, customer base, technological innovations and much more. Other records, including those of the Bank of South America (BOLSA) and Lloyds Bank Europe, reflect banking expansion activities beyond the UK.

Here are some examples of broader topics that have been researched in our archives in the last few years:

Female entrepreneurs in the 18th century
Individual spending and saving in the 19th century
Developments in banking technology
Bank architecture
Marketing materials and messages during the interwar period
Banknote design
Career development in the banking industry

We welcome and encourage the use of our archives by external researchers. For more information on how to access the archive, visit our website

Further information

You can find further information on the history and heritage of Lloyds Banking Group on our website

Silvia Galotti and Siân Yates, Lloyds Banking Group Archives and Museums