Devon and Cornwall Bank

The Devon and Cornwall Bank (formally the Devon & Cornwall Banking Company) was a bank which operated in the Westcountry of England between 1832 and 1906, when it was taken-over by Lloyds Bank.

The bank was established in 1832 as a joint-stock company named Plymouth & Devonport Banking Company by a group of Westcountry businessmen as a vehicle to effect the purchase of Hingston & Prideaux, a private Westcountry bank which had encountered financial difficulties.

The Kingsbridge historian Abraham Hawkins wrote in 1819:

Thus two separate banks were in existence: one at Kingsbridge (Prideaux, Square, and Prideaux) and another at Plymouth (Hingston & Prideaux)

On 31 October 1813 the banking partnership known as Prideaux, Square, Hingston and Prideaux of Kingsbridge in Devon (whose partners were Walter Prideaux (1741-1829) "Senior", John Square, Joseph Hingston and Walter Prideaux (1769-1855) "Junior" (son of Walter Prideaux (1741-1829) "Senior") was dissolved by mutual consent to allow for the retirement of Joseph Hingston (who as Hawkins relates above "removed to Plymouth, where he carries on a similar establishment"), and was immediately reformed as Prideaux, Square and Prideaux.

Joseph Hingston's new partner in the Plymouth bank was Walter Prideaux (d.1832), a cousin of the Kingsbridge bankers, a son of George Prideaux of Kingsbridge by his wife Anna Debell Cookworthy, and a Quaker associated with the Plymouth Brethren, having moved from Kingsbridge to Plymouth in 1812. It is not clear what relation he was to the ancient gentry family of Prideaux seated variously at Orcheton, Modbury; Adeston, Holbeton; Thuborough, Sutcombe; Soldon, Holsworthy; Netherton, Farway; Ashburton; Nutwell, Woodbury; Ford Abbey, Thorncombe all in Devon, and at Prideaux Place, Padstow and Prideaux Castle, Luxulyan, in Cornwall. Fox (1874) stated in regard of the Kingsbridge branch of Prideaux: "We have no intention ... of tracing the pedigree back to old Paganus de Prideaux, who came over from Normandy with William the Conqueror, and who was Lord of the Castle of Prideaux, in Cornwall".

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