A revival began in 1942 when a new general manager was appointed, and a national branch network was established within a couple of years.
The objective was to buy freehold land and divide it into plots for a house and garden, thus conferring a parliamentary vote.
[2] No more sites were bought but the bulk of advances were still made to builders with the loan transferred to the buyer on the sale of the house.
However, it was willing to appoint agencies and, helped by its extensive non-conformist relationships, by the end of the first year there 90 agents around the country willing to act.
A decline in housebuilding left building societies with unsold houses in the late 1860s and in the Temperance 1872 accounts it was thought advisable to write off “a considerable amount for possible depreciation”.
[2] Reflecting the work he had done in the community and the abstinence movement, miner’s son Edward Wood was invited to be a director in 1882 and appointed the Society’s Secretary in 1887.
However, the Temperance continued with its Victorian outlook, believing that the ideal society was one that stayed in its own locality and did not open branches and concentrated on low value properties for “the thrifty worker”.
Between 1920 and 1935 the assets of some societies increased by twenty or thirty times; in contrast the Temperance’s assts little more than trebled.
Between 1943 and 1945, twenty branches were opened around the country, including Glasgow and Edinburgh, and the West Middlesex Building Society was also acquired in 1945.
By size the Temperance had become number nine in the country and four in London and, at the time of writing, the history claimed that there were only six societies that had larger assets.