Colonial Bank

The Colonial Bank was founded by Royal Charter in 1836 to trade in the West Indies. In 1916, an Act of Parliament was obtained to allow the Colonial to extend its operations throughout the British Empire, and it began to open offices in West Africa; the following year a further act permitted the bank to open in any part of the world. In December 1917 Barclays Bank Ltd came to a working arrangement with the Colonial Bank which gave Barclays access to the latter's presence in West Africa and the Caribbean.

Barclays secured a controlling interest in the Colonial Bank in 1918-1919, and in 1925, chairman Frederick Goodenough obtained an Act of Parliament for the re-incorporation of the Colonial Bank, which changed its name to Barclays Bank (Dominion, Colonial and Overseas), a private subsidiary of Barclays Bank Ltd, and soon after absorbed the Anglo-Egyptian Bank and National Bank of South Africa.

Material available at Group Archives:

• court (de facto board of directors) and committee minutes 1836-1925
• shareholders' registers
• profit and loss accounts
• accounting and investment ledgers
• annual reports and accounts
• head office instructions
• loan account ledgers 1894-1915
• customer account ledgers 1899 onwards
• notes on policy and procedures
• branch statistics
• staff register 1890 onward