Bohemia Village Voice

The Great Escape – written by Bill Third, June 2010.

Stephanie Sargent & Maria Williams

TWO OF BOHEMIA’S MOST POPULAR LADIES are leaving us as Stephanie Sargent and Maria Williams (picture) took early retirement from NatWest on May 28th 2010.

Stephanie has been at the Silverhill branch for about 10 years, and Maria has done 15 years in two stints. ‘We’re like a little community bank, that’s the way we like to look at it. We get to know our customers and you build up a personal relationship over the years. It’s always sad when one of our customers dies.’

Maria, who is originally from Fulham, started working at NatWest in Holborn Circus in 1971, but moved to Hastings for affordable housing. Steph, who is Hastings born and bred, started at the National Provincial bank in Robertson Street in 1968 at the age of 16. ‘When they merged with the Westminster bank, I moved to Havelock Road where I met Maria in 1972.’

The two colleagues have seen the radical changes that have taken place in banking at first hand, from hand-written ledger entries to today’s almost entirely automated operations. Did they think that anything had been lost in the process?

‘People don’t start at the bottom in the way they used to. All the standing orders and vouchers used to be processed in the “machine room” at the branch. This is all done centrally now. Sometimes you feel there is a loss of understanding between debit and credit because of this.’

Fortunately even digital banking still needs a human interface and for many of us Maria and Stephanie have been that welcome human face. Always immaculately turned out and well coiffed, they are pleasant and efficient. But they do have the humour and the bit of restrained edge you need to deal with all kinds of people on a daily basis. One of the ladies, not to mention any names, has a particularly wicked brand of underlying humour.

Stephanie on the other hand is more of a world improver in her initial approach to any situation, perhaps because of having grown up as a child of parents who were community leaders in Hollington, prominent in table tennis, a sport she practises herself to this day.

Stephanie and Maria have helped raise up to £1,000 between them in their top season over 10 years of support for Children In Need at Silverhill.

So what would be on the agenda once they took early retirement? ‘We will be ladies who lunch, frequently, with lots of gardening thrown in.’ they say.

The girls celebrated ‘The Great Escape’ with a farewell party on May 22nd at the Hastings & St. Leonard’s Angling Association clubhouse when customers, colleagues and friends came along for a chat, a sing and a dance. The Silverhill branch will stay open and ‘looks set to become even busier with the new ASDA opening’, says Stephanie. It will be left in the good hands of Janet, counter manager at Hastings, Debbie and Jenny.

‘I’ve got them all well-trained in customer abuse,’ says Maria with a grin.