Happy birthday Bank of England! 330 years young

Insight | By Edmund Greaves

MRM head of editorial Edmund Greaves looks forward to the Bank of England’s 330rd birthday with some top facts about the Old Lady of Threadneedle Street, while highlighting what else is coming up in July.

Happy Birthday Bank of England! 330 years of managing Britain’s finances. The Bank’s birthday is on 27 July. In that spirit, I’ve dug up some choice facts. Did you know that:

It was set up as a bank for Britain’s joint monarchs King William III and Queen Mary II, and state, to help raise funds for war with France and the Low Countries.
Its nickname ‘The Old Lady of Threadneedle Street’ or just ‘The Old Lady’ comes from a 1799 cartoon depicting the bank as an old woman wearing a dress made of banknotes.
It was the first ‘modern’ central bank in the world, but only took on this role in the 1800s when it began to print money and store national gold reserves.
The bank was privately owned until 1946, when the Attlee Government nationalised it. Its first shareholders were William and Mary.
The Bank of England’s vaults hold over 400,000 bars of gold – worth around £237 billion – a quantity second only to the New York Federal Reserve, and an equivalent quantity to around 3% of all the gold that has ever been mined.

So there you go. Hopefully there will be scads of Bank of England themed pub quizzes in the coming weeks which you are now armed to win. You’re very welcome!

Coming up in July

So what else is on the docket for July?

The UK General Election – or ‘Genny Lec’ as I’m informed the GenZers call it – is on 4 July, not one to be missed, for reasons that probably don’t need explaining here!

We’ve got monthly GDP estimates on 11 July and ONS inflation on 17 July.

The illustrious financial media awards the Headlinemoney Awards are also on 17 July. I look forward to attending and hopefully seeing some familiar friendly faces! MRM has been shortlisted for PR Agency of the Year, so fingers crossed on that front.

Wages and employment figures are out on 18 July.

Thanks everyone and wishing you a warm and frivolous July as we get into the depths of Summer from all of us at MRM and Mouthy Money.