Before bank holidays
For most of history, time off followed the church. Saints' days, fairs and seasonal festivals broke up the working year, and the Bank of England itself closed on more than 30 of them. Factory work and commerce made that pattern inconvenient, and in 1834 the Bank cut its list to four: Good Friday, 1 May, 1 November and Christmas Day.
Workers lost out. Many took an unofficial day anyway, a habit known as keeping Saint Monday, but there was no general right to a holiday and no agreed days on which business paused.
1871: Sir John Lubbock's Act
Sir John Lubbock was a banker, a Liberal MP and a scientist who counted Charles Darwin as a neighbour and mentor. In 1871 he introduced the Bank Holidays Bill. It named days on which banks could close, and on which any bill or payment falling due would be payable the next day instead.
That detail is the reason for the name. Closing a bank on a working day would otherwise have put it in breach of its obligations. Once the banks were shut, other trades followed, and the days became holidays for almost everyone. The public called them St Lubbock's Days.
The original bank holidays
- England, Wales and Ireland: Easter Monday, Whit Monday, the first Monday in August and 26 December.
- Scotland: New Year's Day, Good Friday, the first Monday in May, the first Monday in August and Christmas Day.
Good Friday and Christmas Day were missing from the English list only because they were already holidays by long custom. The two lists differed from the start, which is the root of the differences between England and Scotland today.
A century of small changes
In 1903 a separate Act made St Patrick's Day a bank holiday in Ireland. After partition it stayed on the Northern Ireland calendar, joined later by the Battle of the Boyne holiday on 12 July.
The bigger shift came in the 1960s. Whit Monday depended on Easter and could fall anywhere over five weeks, and the early-August holiday crowded the roads and resorts at the peak of summer. From 1965 the government trialled a fixed Spring bank holiday at the end of May and moved the August bank holiday to the end of the month in England, Wales and Northern Ireland.
1971: the modern framework
The Banking and Financial Dealings Act 1971 repealed the Victorian law and made the trial dates permanent. It is still in force. It lists the standing bank holidays for each part of the UK and lets the monarch add, move or replace days by royal proclamation.
Proclamations have done a lot of work since. New Year's Day was added for England, Wales and Northern Ireland from 1974, the same year Scotland gained Boxing Day. The Early May bank holiday followed in 1978. Each is still granted this way, year by year.
The last permanent addition was St Andrew's Day, created by the Scottish Parliament in 2007 after bank holidays were devolved.
One-off holidays for national events
The proclamation power is also how extra days are granted. Royal weddings in 1973, 1981 and 2011, jubilees in 1977, 2002, 2012 and 2022, the millennium in 1999, the State Funeral of Queen Elizabeth II in 2022 and the coronation in 2023 all brought a bank holiday that did not repeat.
In jubilee years the Spring bank holiday was moved into June to create a four-day weekend. The Early May holiday has twice been shifted to 8 May for a VE Day anniversary. Every case is listed in the bank holiday dates archive.
What has never changed
A bank holiday has never been a right to a day off. The Acts concern banks and financial dealings; whether a worker is released, and whether they are paid, has always been a matter for the employer and the contract. Since 1998 workers have had a legal minimum of paid annual leave, now 5.6 weeks, and employers may count bank holidays towards it.
The debate about adding more goes on. England and Wales have eight, among the fewest in Europe, and proposals for a new autumn holiday or for St George's Day and St David's Day surface in most parliaments.