Too big to fail. That was the cry of the regulators five years ago as we watched the then Government dig itself ever deeper into debt to bail out some of our banks.

But a short whizz round a few Oxford buildings that once were, or in some cases still are, banks, reveals in microcosm how the overweening and impersonal business of modern banking evolved into the monster it now is: through a series of wider and wider mergers of once local organisations.

The Ashmolean Museum possesses a £10 note of the surprisingly late date of 1899 issued by the Old Bank in the High Street, now the Old Bank Hotel.

It is signed by a couple of bankers called Thompson and Parsons.

The bank in that building could trace its origins back to the 1770s, but by the date of that bank note it was known as Parsons, Thompson & Co.

The following year it was absorbed into the burgeoning Barclays and the name over the door was changed in 1917.

Round the corner in Cornmarket Street the bank Gillet and Co was flourishing.

It was founded in 1877 by local business brothers Alfred and Charles Gillet in the former Shakespeare Hotel.

It prospered and established branches throughout the county, each with a manager concerned with local affairs and with an ear to the ground.

It too was absorbed into Barclays in 1919 and remains to this day a branch of that bank — which, of course, has never needed bailing out.

The Oxford Trustee Savings Bank established itself in Market Street in 1884 and became part of TSB in 1975, which in turn amalgamated with Lloyds — the Birmingham group that had moved into its first Oxford branch at 11 Cornmarket in 1900.

Child and Co, which has a banking association with Oxford University dating back to the 16th century, opened a branch at 32 St Giles in 1977.

It is still there but it is now labelled the Royal Bank of Scotland, since that bank has taken over the brand. Newspaper proprietor William Jackson, owner of the 18th century Jacksons Oxford Journal, also acted as a banker on the side until his death in 1795; discovering that the two activities complemented each other well.