HERE is North Street prior to the building of the present Yorkshire Bank in 1968, replacing the shops on the right, relics of an older thoroughfare.
The fine late-Victorian premises of Barclays Bank still mirrored those of the National Westminster Bank on opposite sides of Russell Street.
The Yorkshire Bank was to move across North Street from its former accommodation in Keighley’s original Mechanics’ Institute of 1834, a pioneering venture which brought lectures, adult classes, scientific apparatus and a library within reach of interested townsfolk.
North Street was first laid out in 1786 and widened in the 1890s, during a three-decade ‘golden age’ following Keighley’s granting of municipal borough status in 1882 – a period which gave us our solid ornamented stone buildings, public parks and library, museum and Town Hall Square.
Rather surprisingly, the present Yorkshire Bank was said at its opening to have been “designed to harmonise with neighbouring properties”.
All three photographs have been supplied by Mr Kevin Seaton, of Shann Lane, Keighley.
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