A Yorkstone Godzilla. A materiality of mutuality at the Halifax Building Society, 1968–1974

Matthew Tillotson

Journal of Cultural Economy, 2022, vol. 15, issue 5, 617-633

Abstract: How does a monumental building – the former headquarters of the Halifax Building Society – in a northern English town embody a material expression of the mutualised mortgage industry dominant in the UK at the time of its conception and construction? How does this building correspond to a specific dispositif of mutuality? I consider questions such as these through documentary research, an interview, and correspondence with an architect who worked on the project (1968–1974). The building’s current use as a global banking group’s ‘head office’ is significantly different from that which supported mutuality in the 1970s, and I consider the building’s architectural and technological forms to understand how it organised a material cultural expression of the mutual building society’s power, and of its members’ money–power, through the mechanisation of an intensifying mortgage-handling business and the bunkering of a gradually increasing stock of mortgage paper.

Date: 2022
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DOI: 10.1080/17530350.2022.2083659

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