Santander to bring an end to historic British banking names

Two well-known names will start to disappear from British high streets tomorrow when Spanish bank Santander starts to rebrand its Abbey and Bradford & Bingley branches.

Bradford Equitable and Bingley Permanent societies were both founded in 1851and merged in 1964. The Abbey name comes from the Abbey Road & St John's Wood Permanent Building Society founded in 1874 in Abbey Road Baptist Church in north-west London, just yards from the studios where The Beatles recorded the Abbey Road album.

Over the next three weeks, the re-branding will put an end to these historic names given to 719 Abbey branches and 326 B&B branches.

Abbey was bought by Santander in 2004 and the Bank also took over the Bradford & Bingley after its collapse during the credit crunch last year it later bought the Alliance & Leicester during the crisis. The Alliance & Leicester’s 278 branches are scheduled to be rebranded Santander later this year.

The Spanish banking giant has thousands of UK shareholders from its takeover of Abbey, formerly Abbey National, which was the first building society to convert to a bank in 1989.