It is a scene you might find in the Bank of England’s museum. Behind a green leather-topped table, in front of a locked safe, a grey-haired man in a three-piece suit goes through a mortgage application line by line.

Mike Heenan is no museum piece, as the two computer flat screens on the desk show, but part of a living institution that has been quietly serving its members for 131 years. Through all the revolutions of the financial industry, Stafford Railway Building Society, from its lone branch in the town’s market square, has continued to guard people’s savings and lend them to those needing a house.