Heywood’s Bank was a private banking firm established in Manchester by members of the Heywood family in 1788. It was founded as Benjamin Heywood, Sons & Co by Benjamin Heywood and his two sons, Benjamin and Nathaniel. The Heywoods had moved to Manchester from Liverpool, where the elder Benjamin had worked as a merchant and ship-owner alongside his brother Arthur, who had founded a successful bank in Liverpool in 1773. The elder Benjamin and his two sons used £10,000 of family money to found their new bank.^[1]

On Benjamin’s death in 1795 the bank became known as Heywood Brothers & Co. In 1814, Nathaniel’s eldest son Benjamin Heywood joined the firm. Nathaniel died in 1815, and two more of his sons joined the firm: Thomas in 1818 and Richard in 1820. Benjamin Arthur Heywood, the last of the original founders, died in 1828, and the following year Thomas and Richard retired from banking, leaving their brother Benjamin as the sole partner; he renamed the bank Benjamin Heywood & Co.^[1]

Benjamin was created the First Baronet of Claremont in 1838, and again renamed the bank, this time to Sir Benjamin Heywood Bart. & Co. He subsequently brought his four sons into the firm when they came of age: Oliver, Arthur, Edward and Charles. Benjamin retired in 1860, leaving his sons to run the bank, which they renamed Heywood Brothers & Co.^[1]

Heywood’s was acquired by the Manchester & Salford Bank in April 1874, for £240,000.^[1]

Locations

The bank was opened in Exchange Street, Manchester in 1788, and in 1795 moved to St Ann Street.^[1]

In 1848 the Heywood family commissioned a new building at 25 St Ann Street, still in use today as a branch of the Royal Bank of Scotland. Designed by John Edgar Gregan, it is “a three-storey stone clad building in the Italian style, with a deeply rusticated ground floor and two upper floors in ashlarMasonry of squared and finely cut or worked stone, commonly used for the facing of a building.. The ground floor windows, large to light the banking hall, have arched openings, inside which the arched windows are flanked by classical columns. Next to it is a smaller building in brick with stone detailing which was the home of the bank manager”^[2]