National Provincial Bank National Provincial Bank National Provincial Bank was a British retail bank which operated in England and Wales from 1833 until 1970 when it was merged into the National Westminster Bank. It continued to exist as a dormant non-trading company until 2016 when it was voluntarily struck off the register and dissolved. Considered one of the "Big Five," the National Provincial Bank expanded during the 19th and 20th centuries and took over a number of smaller banking companies. It was based on Bishopsgate, at the thoroughfare's junction with Threadneedle Street, in London. The National Provincial Bank played a unique role in
British Linen Bank branch network was given as joint third to the Royal Bank and the Commercial Bank of Scotland. British Linen, now formally a bank, had distanced itself from the amalgamations in Scottish banking and by 1914 it had "declined from a position somewhere in the middle of the scale to the bottom". By the end of the First World War British Linen realised it needed an association with a larger bank with good overseas connections and agreement was reached for Barclays to buy the bank in 1919. As with other Scottish banks, geographic sensitivities led to British Linen being referred to