Company, previously known as Abbey National, deriving from what had been Britain's second largest *building society.This was formed in 1944 by the merger of the Abbey Road Building Society (originally a self-help group founded in 1874 in a Baptist church in London's Abbey Road) and the National (established in 1849). In 1989 more than 5 million members (the savers and the borrowers) voted to convert the society into a public limited company in which they would have shares, thus becoming the first building society to depart from the non-profit-making tradition. The name of the company on the high street was shortened in 2003 to Abbey. The head offices are on the site in *Baker Street associated with Sherlock Holmes.
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