THANK you so much for the story you published about the long marriage of Mr and Mrs Colquhoun (Gazette, August 22, 'Six decades of marital bliss').

You have helped to add some missing details to the Martins Bank staff database. Until now we only had details of Mrs Colquhoun's entry (as Miss E M Hodson) to Martins Trustee Department at Kendal in 1954, and her resignation in her married name in 1963.

It also seems she "bucked the trend" a little. It was usual practice for a woman to resign from the bank upon marriage but, having married in 1959, Mrs Colquhoun stayed on the staff for four years before finally leaving to have her first child. This could mean that because the work undertaken at Martins Kendal Trust Company was quite specialist, she could well have been a valuable member of staff. Very few women were allowed to stay on after marriage in an industry-wide practice which thankfully would be against the law today.

In 1964 Martins Bank stopped publishing lists of women who resigned, and from then on women were allowed to stay. Kendal Trustee was the largest provincial office of what became Martins Bank Trust Company, taken over by Barclays 50 years ago this year.

For those who worked for Martins Bank in this part of the country, or for relatives researching details for a family tree, our staff database has around 250,000 entries and covers all the local staff who worked for the bank between 1946 and 1969.

We have thousands of images of the staff who worked at Martins Bank's branches all over the country on our website www.martinsbank.co.uk, where Kendal and its sub-branches are particularly well represented. We welcome enquiries by email to gutinfo@btinternet.com

Jonathan Snowden

Arnside