A hundred years of Kilcullen banking ends next week

In or around 1920, a branch of the Hibernian Bank in Newbridge used to open on Saturdays in Kilcullen, as well as on Market and Fair Days, according to a contemporary trade directory, writes Brian Byrne.

Though there's no reference to exactly where the part-time service operated from, in June 1927 John Collins of The Mill, Kilcullen, put an advertisement in a local paper seeking tenants for ‘two rooms lately occupied by Hibernian Bank’, so it is likely that around that time the bank moved to new premises. The building currently owned by the bank was two retail shops around 1911-1917, when it was part of a photograph taken by Robert French for the Lawrence postcard company (below). The bank certainly owned the building in the early 1940s, because Jim O’Connell and his family lived in the apartment over the premises, according to Nessa Dunlea.

Bank of Ireland acquired Hibernian Bank in 1958, and in 1965 also acquired the Irish interests of the National Bank. In 1969, all three were merged to the Bank of Ireland Group. In December 1974, the Kilcullen sub-office (Hibernian Branch) of Newbridge Bank of Ireland  became a full branch of Bank of Ireland, connected to Newbridge, as previously announced in November in the Nationalist & Leinster Times newspaper.

There have been excitements. In August 1972 the then manager Mr Maurice Brannigan, and his wife Margaret, were robbed in their living quarters over the bank, of £119 which was the family’s personal funds saved for a holiday. The perpetrators were two masked men, one armed with a shotgun, and they reportedly ‘said not a single word’ during the robbery. In April 2006, two men wearing balaclavas and wielding knives burst in shortly before 2pm and pushed waiting customers around while demanding money from the staff. But in general, the branch has been a peaceful place.

From 1974, the Kilcullen branch provided all necessary financial services to the people and businesses in Kilcullen. Its various managers and staff members were involved in the community as Kilcullen grew gradually from a small village to something bigger. The most recent events with which the bank was heavily involved were the Enterprise Town ‘Expos’ of 2016 and 2017, the second one shared with Ballymore. They brought a buzz to the town across all community and business entities. Rachel Allen was the special guest for 2016 (above), while the 2017 one had Daithi O Sé as celebrity host.

However, both events were overshadowed by the announcement made in 2015 that counter services at the branch were to be reduced and restricted. It was part of the inexorable march of impersonal banking.

In August 2017, the Kilcullen branch went fully ‘cashless', with all lodgement, withdrawal and statement checking only possible by machine, and anyone requiring foreign exchange or coin lodgement required to use Naas or Newbridge branches.

At the beginning of the pandemic in March 2020, the Kilcullen branch was closed ‘temporarily’ to allow staff be relocated to the Newbridge branch in order to maintain services safely. In May, Cllr Tracey O’Dwyer asked for assurances that it would be reopened after the Covid crisis was over. She subsequently said she was ‘unhappy’ with the bank’s reply.

In early March this year, Bank of Ireland announced plans to include Kilcullen and Monasterevin branches in a list of 103 branches it would close. At the end of the month, a petition established by local Labour Party Senator Mark Wall to pause the decision to close both branches was delivered to the CEO of Bank of Ireland, Francesca McDonagh, by the Labour Party's spokesperson on finance, Ged Nash TD. It made no difference.

When the Bank closes next Friday, accounts will transfer to Newbridge, and local lodgement and withdrawal facilities for customers will be available through Kilcullen Post Office.

It will be a quiet corporate slipping away of a service which has been a part of Kilcullen for 100 years. However, as it does, let us remember the good people who have staffed and served and smiled and sympathised and helped generations of local people conducting their financial affairs with real human beings, rather than the entity now leaving Kilcullen not with a bang, nor hardly even a whimper.

Slán agus beannacht, people. We'll miss you. We've already given up on the faceless corporate who gave up on us, though.

(My thanks to Mario Corrigan of Kildare Library Service for his help in unearthing some of the older details.)

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