Enfield

Where’s London’s oldest…cash machine location?…

by exploringlondon
PICTURE: Matt Brown (Licensed under CC BY 2.0)

Recently listed at Grade II by the Department of Culture, Media and Sport, a Barclays Bank in the northern London suburb of Enfield was the first in the world to be fitted with an automatic teller machine or ATM as we know them.

The prototype machine was devised by John Shepherd-Barron, managing director at banknote manufacturer De La Rue and required the customer to insert a special paper voucher punched with dots corresponding to their four digit PIN (the PIN featured four digits because Shepherd-Barron, who had initially proposed using six, heeded the words of wife after she told him she couldn’t recall more than four).

The bank, located at 20 The Town, was selected for a range of reasons, including that it has good pavement access, high windows and was close to Barclays head office. 

The ATM was officially opened on 27th June, 1967, by Barclays deputy chairman Sir Thomas Bland while actor and comedian Reg Varney made the first £10 withdrawal.

The red brick bank where the machine was located was built in 1897 and designed by William Gilbee Scott in a style architectural historian Nikolaus Pevsner described as “exuberant Flemish Renaissance”.

PICTURE: Matt Brown (Licensed under CC BY 2.0)

Barclays celebrated the 50th anniversary of the installation in 2017 with the installation of a plaque and by turning one of the existing cash machines at the Enfield branch gold.

What’s in a name?…Cockfosters…

by exploringlondon


No more than the name of a Tube terminus (the north-east end of the Piccadilly Line) to many Londoners, Cockfosters has an interesting origin story.

The area in north London, which lies partly in the London Borough of Enfield and partly in the London Borough of Barnet, owes its name to its location on the edge of what was the royal forest of Enfield Chase.

In the 15th century, the forest was protected by foresters housed in three lodges – one of which was located where the West Lodge Park hotel, built in 1838, now stands.

(An interesting side note is that after the foresters stopped using the original lodge, it became, at one stage, the home of King Charles II’s Secretary of State, Henry Coventry. Diarist John Evelyn is among those who visited him.)

The ‘fosters’ part of the name is apparently derived from an Elizabethan-era variant of the word forester while ‘cock’ is a old word for leader or chief. Cockfosters, then, literally means the home of the chief or head forester.

The modernist Tube station, designed by Charles Holden and opened in 1933, is a key landmark as is the stately, Grade II-listed property Trent Park which is located on a remnant of Enfield Chase.

Other notable buildings include Christ Church Cockfosters, founded in 1839, and The Cock Inn, which opened in Chalk Lane in 1798.

PICTURED: Top – Trent Park House (© Christine Matthews/licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0; below – Cockfosters Tube Station (Steve Cadman/licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0).