The Cork Trustee Savings Bank was established 206 years ago today.

206 years ago today, on 20 December 1817, The Cork Savings Bank first opened for business. An Act of Parliament (57, George III), had been signed into law on 11 July 1817, regulating the operations of Saving Banks.

Savings Banks had been functioning before then, but the new legislation provided for the money saved to be deposited with the government, thus ensuring security. Savings Banks targeted the lower income groups of society with the aim of encouraging thrift amongst these users, offering security for their savings whilst paying a fixed interest on deposits. Previously, it had been customary to lodge the savings to the credit of a wealthy landowner who paid interest thereon.

Shortly after the passing of the Act, a meeting was called in the Commercial Buildings, now the Imperial Hotel, to discuss the establishment of a Savings Bank. The meeting was chaired by the Church of Ireland Bishop of Cork and Ross, and the Catholic Bishop, Dr Murphy, proposed the formation of the Bank. The main force behind the Cork Savings Bank, was the Catholic Bishop, John Murphy, while the chair at its first organising meeting was taken by his Protestant colleague. Several people were sceptical of placing the funds on deposit with the government, fearing that a system of income tax might be introduced and levied on the deposits. The Cork Savings Bank initially opened in a room of the Cork Institution, business being conducted initially on Saturdays only. All labour was voluntary and done on rotation; if a volunteer did not attend he was fined five shillings!

The very first annual report of the Cork Savings Bank noted that many of its depositors were too prosperous to deserve its benefits, adding that “this species of deposits, if continued, would eventually close the Bank, as no gentleman could be got to give their time gratuitously as Managers to conduct the money dealings of their equals and in many cases their superiors in rank and property”.

In 1834 John Craig came to Ireland when he succeeded his uncle as agent of the Sligo branch of the Bank of Ireland and then 1837 he was appointed Manager of the Bank of Ireland in Cork, a position he held until his retirement in 1866. After his arrival in Cork he also became Treasurer of the Cork Savings Bank – a voluntary position. He was elected trustee of the Bank on 16 April 1839 while it was still located on Pembroke Street, (on the site of present General Post Office). Incidentally this premises was the first designed by the young architect, Thomas Deane of Cork. The bank had a large surplus in 1839 (the total funds of the bank were more than ￡250,000), part of which funded the fine building on Lapp’s Quay, which opened in 1842.

In November of 1839 the neoclassical design submitted by the architectural practice of Thomas and Kearns Deane has been chosen for the new Cork Savings Bank, to be located at 1 Lapps Quay, on the corner of Lapp’s Quay and Warren’s Place (now Parnell Place). The neoclassical style was considered appropriate to demonstrate the power, status and stability of the banks, stability being particularly important following the failure of banks in the post Napoleonic era. The later entitled Sir Thomas Newenham Deane was later to partner with Benjamin Woodward to form Deane & Woodward, who subsequently designed the Queens Colleges in Dublin, Galway and Cork, the now entitled University College Cork now owning the Lapps Quay premises.

The building was constructed from Ballinlough / Beaumont quarry limestone, with two elevations incorporating imposing columns, at a cost of ￡11,000, at a time when the 1817-founded Cork Savings Bank’s cash on deposit had risen to ￡332,000. The building has its short but quietly assertive 18m facade to the river, and a longer 32’ facade along Parnell Place, where it links to 16 Parnell Place, a late Georgian residence associated with the Cork Savings Bank.

The building was opened for business in 1842 and a plaque above the doorway to the banking hall commemorates the date and those responsible for designing and building the bank.

By 1846 the Cork Savings Bank held 12,510 accounts for somewhat over one hundred thousand Corkonians, but its catchment area seems to have spread more into the rural hinterland than Dublin’s or Belfast’s. In the year ending 20 November 1846 the proportions holding ￡20 or less stood at 39%.

The Bank survived what the Southern Reporter described as a middle class run on the Cork Savings Bank in April 1848. Noting that a single family had served notice to withdraw upwards of ￡400 on the following Saturday, the Southern Reporter asked “Does (the ￡350,000 on deposit) belong to our poor? Are they parties whose vulgar fears have caused all the monetary alarm to which we have been subjected? No such thing. The depositors are not the humble classes. We know the fact to be so. Their whole deposits in the bank, though for them alone its benefits were intended, are not estimated to amount to more than ￡60,000! The rest has been lodged in evasion of the law by people of a class which was never meant to have the privilege of depositing in it... The present run on the Cork Savings Bank is not their (i.e. the poor) act, but that of persons who should never, had proper care been taken by its management, been allowed to deposit in it”.

The trustees of the bank were forced to withdraw ￡45,000 of their investment in the national debt during the first half of April 1848 in order to meet the run. There was another run that spread from Cork to Dublin in 1853 stemming from a rumour that the Cork Savings Bank had closed for good, when in fact it was merely refurbishing its facilities.

It continued to operate as a bank until 2012, when owners, Trustee Savings Bank, closed a number of branches, including Lapps Quay. No1 Lapps Quay closed its doors as a bank in 2013, then under permanent TSB stewardship, as part of a bank reorganisation.

The much-loved bank building sold twice since; first in 2014 to Cork City Council for c€850,000. The city’s conservation architect, Pat Ruane, helped draft plans so skilfully executed by Jack Coughlan Architects for a sensitive expansion, into an enclosed side courtyard and rising over three levels, to give it enough functional space to complement the grandeur of the banking hall, and boardroom, all for a new purpose. City Hall then put it back for sale in 2016.

In 2015, UCC had made a decision to locate their Centre for Executive Education in a dynamic, city centre location, and entered into an agreement with Cork City Council to re-use the former Savings Bank on Lapp’s Quay for this purpose.

Conservation architect Gareth O’Callaghan, a director with Jack Coughlan & Associates, who was also responsible for the later Nano Nagle Place redevelopment, drove a professional team for UCC’s Buildings and Estates office, headed by Summerhill Construction, which worked for 12 months on the project, a protected structure.

The accommodation has grown from about 850 sq metres to 1,360 sq m, about a 50% increase, matching and counterbalancing what had been a few large volume, classical spaces albeit with limited 21st century functionality with practical teaching, meeting, and mingling spaces. To facilitate this refurbishment and reuse of the Savings Bank a new extension was constructed within the enclosed yard to the east. The new extension enables direct circulation across the upper floors of the former secretary’s house on Parnell Place to the southern rooms of the Bank. This extension also facilitates circulation through the building without requiring one to circulate through the main Banking Hall.

An article was published on the centenary of the bank in the Journal of the Cork Historical and Archaeological Society (1917) Anon., ‘Cork Savings Bank 1817-1917', Journal of the Cork Historical and Archaeological Society, XXIII, No. 116 (Dec. 1917), 178-80; and a 2008 article by Cormac ó Gráda of University College Dublin on The Early History of Irish Savings Banks is available for download at:

https://researchrepository.ucd.ie/handle/10197/494