Never used a Cheque book before.

surreysaver

The cheques in my cheque book still have Abbey National printed on them. Must be about twenty years since Santander rebranded it?

flaneurs_lobster

surreysaver said:

The cheques in my cheque book still have Abbey National printed on them. Must be about twenty years since Santander rebranded it?

The address of my branch in the cheque book is now a Wetherspoons, the address it moved to is now a Lush, the address is now nominally in an out-of town trading estate. 

MyRealNameToo

Bob2000 said:

I've never used one, so is there any real difference  between cheques  other than design/brand?

Only design, in the old days some would be marked payee only and others wouldnt be but very much doubt there are any cheques that arent pre-crossed with payee only

Similarly you'd get a cheque guarantee card, the limit on that card could vary by either issuer or account type however they were only used when paying for your groceries by cheque etc so the merchant knew that they'd get paid up to the value of the guarantee on your card, ie the cheque wouldnt bounce because you have no funds in the account. 

The rest comes down to your account setup, some accounts need to signatories to agree money is withdrawn and so the cheque also needed two signatures. Some would have two lines and others wouldnt, most would be a long single line to avoid having different books for single and joint accounts. 

UKX69

flaneurs_lobster said:

By design (they are designed to be machine readable) cheques are pretty much the same size and layout regardless of issuer.

Back last century(!) NatWest had a long line of pictorial cheques (wildlife, landmark buildings etc) but I don't think anyone does this anymore.

Mrs UKX and myself still have a chequebook with wildlife. Shows when we last wrote one on the joint account!