Local Banks in Egham
PRIVATE BANKS IN EGHAM
The only private bank in to be started in Egham was that of Wetton & Co.
trading as Egham Bank. Champion Constable Wetton (b. 1781) was a printer by trade who turned to,
amongst other things, publishing and then banking. He is listed in a, 1818 prospectus for Chertsey Savings Bank as one of its directors. Champion started his
bank, in Egham in 1830, in partnership with his brother, George Norman Wetton, who was a bookseller in Northampton.
Wetton was, allegedly, a man of 'slovenly, unmethodical
habits' and his affairs got into hopeless confusion. Wetton left Egham one morning in April 1851 and was later found dead in a ditch beside the railway line to Wraysbury. It is
believed that he committed suicide as an escape from his financial situation.
The bank was taken over, in 1851, by Mangles Brothers' West Surrey Bank.
Cheque issued Wetton's Bank