Early history The origins of the Woolwich lay in an earlier terminating society, based in the local Castle Inn and chaired by the publican. In 1847 a breakaway group met to form the Woolwich Equitable Benefit Building and Investment Society (later reduced to the Woolwich Equitable Building Society). That the active founders of the new society included the pastor of the Salem Chapel and a Sunday School teacher may indicate the reason for the breakaway. The first meeting was held in the parlour of a “modest house” of Benjamin Wates, a local draper. The Wates family was to play a significant role in the early history of the Woolwich. Samuel Wates, Benjamin’s younger brother, was appointed Secretary in 1848 but following his death in 1851, Benjamin took over until 1862 followed briefly by his son and then by the youngest brother Joseph, who was Secretary and General Manager until 1880. Joseph Wates then became a director, rearing as Chairman in 1901. A feature of the early years was the Society lending out more than it had money, with funds coming from directors signing promissory notes to the bank. Indeed, support from its bank (the
London & County) was to feature on future occasions. Nevertheless, after ten years the Woolwich claimed to be “one of the leading Metropolitan societies” and dominant in its own neighbourhood. This may have been an optimistic claim as the Wolwich was run on a very small scale: the Secretary was obliged to live on the premises until 1876, and in 1863 there were only 500 members. A shock to the town and the Society was the closure of the
Woolwich Dockyard in 1869. However, it made the Society look outside its immediate area. In 1872 there was reference to “suitable persons to be appointed as agents in eligible localities” and then to “outlying districts” having proved successful; however, “outlying” still appeared to be relatively local.
The modern era: expansion and diversification From 1960, the Woolwich combined opening new branches with a series of acquisitions. Between the acquisition of the Modern Permanent in 1960 and the Town and Country in 1992, some nine societies were absorbed by the Woolwich. Notable among them were the fraudulent Grays and the Gateway, successor to the
Temperance Building Society. The Gateway acquisition in 1988 took assets up to £13 billion. By then, financial deregulation encouraged the Woolwich to diversify away from its traditional mortgage business. In 1989, the Woolwich launched its first subsidiary operation, a financial planning service. It also formed Woolwich Property Services and took over part of the estate agency operations of the
Prudential Plc in 1991; by the late 1990s, it had a national chain of nearly 170 branch locations. Other ventures included offshore banking, Woolwich Guernsey; Woolwich Life; Woolwich Unit Trust Managers Limited; and Italian and French banking businesses. In August 2000, Barclays took over Woolwich PLC in a £5.4bn acquisition. Woolwich PLC thus joined the Barclays Bank Group of companies. The Woolwich brand-name was retained after the acquisition, and the Woolwich head office remained in
Bexleyheath, south-east
London, 4.5 mi from the original office in
Woolwich. On 28 June 2006, Barclays announced that The Woolwich was to become the Barclays UK
mortgage brand, supported by Barclays branches, and that Woolwich branches would be either closed or re-branded as Barclays. Associated changes to
call centres affected up to 1,200 jobs, mostly at The Woolwich contact centre in
Clacton-on-Sea, which closed at the end of 2007. Although the Woolwich name lived on as the brand used for Barclays mortgages, this was discontinued in 2015. == Headquarters ==