16.11.2009 Hebridean Island St Kilda features on Clydesdale Bank’s new £5 note - St Kilda

The Hebridean Island St Kilda features in the new Clydesdale Bank £5 note, which enters circulation today (Monday 16 November). The third of Clydesdale Bank’s new world heritage bank notes will be available at selected Clydesdale Bank retail branches across the country from 10am.

As well as featuring the St Kilda, on one side of the £5 note will also depict iconic images of the biologist Sir Alexander Fleming on the reverse.

Clydesdale Bank’s new world heritage note collection showcases the best of Scotland’s heritage, people and culture, and is the first time in more than 20 years the Bank has launched a completely new set of notes.

Introduced to mark the year of the Homecoming, the front of each new note will honour a prominent and innovative Scot while the reverse will feature one of Scotland’s five World Heritage sites.

Clydesdale Bank is the largest issuer of notes in Scotland, with more than £1.1bn in circulation in any given week.

Hamish Boag, managing partner of Clydesdale Bank’s Highlands and Islands Financial Solutions Centre, said: “Having St Kilda on the new £5 note reinforces the depth of the nation’s history. St Kilda is one of only 24 locations in the world to be awarded mixed World Heritage status for its natural and cultural significance.

“Clydesdale Bank is honoured to be associated with the people and locations depicted on the new world heritage bank notes and we hope the notes prompt people to take a further interest and to delve deeper into Scotland’s history.”

Malcolm Maclean, director of the Gaelic arts agency, Proiseact Nan Ealan said: "St Kilda is a very special place and was inhabited for 3,000 years until its evacuation in 1930. Its spectacular cliffs now host the most important seabird colony in North West Europe with more than a million birds. The remarkable history of the place and its people has even inspired its own opera."

Malcolm added: "The Clydesdale Bank is to be congratulated on highlighting Scotland's heritage in this way and I wish them every success with this new series of UNESCO World Heritage Site bank notes."

The new notes will be the first in the UK to use a new ‘depth image’ hologram security feature – which is a moving image behind the prominent front picture.

The bank’s £20 and £50 note, featuring Robert the Bruce, New Lanark, Elsie Inglis and the Antonine Wall have already entered circulation and are widely available from cash machines and retail branches throughout the country.

Notes from the new collection were part of Clydesdale Bank’s recent charity auctions of rare and valuable bank notes, where a £1 note sold for £9,000 breaking the previous world record for the sale of a Scottish bank note. In total, across the two auctions, the Bank raised more than £200,000 for charities across the UK.