November 30 is the feast day of St Andrews, more commonly known as St Andrew’s Day.

Saint Andrew is the patron saint of Scotland, Greece, Romania, Russia, Poland, Ukraine, the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople and Saint Andrew, Barbados.

In 2006, the Scottish Parliament passed the St. Andrew's Day Bank Holiday (Scotland) Act 2007, which designated the Day as an official bank holiday. If 30 November falls on a weekend, the next Monday is a bank holiday instead.

Although it is a bank holiday, banks are not required to close and employers are not required to give their employees the day off as a holiday. The University of St Andrews traditionally gives the day for all the students as a free holiday, but this is not a binding rule.

This letter from 1873 is from the goldfields in Grahamstown, requesting that the Auckland Provincial Government declare the Monday after St Andrew’s day a bank holiday as it happened to fall on a Sunday, as it does this year. We don’t have the response from the government to see if the request was granted for the miners. The letter is marked as being sent from Grahamstown, which is now part of modern day Thames. The town of Thames was the combination of the settlements of Grahamstown and Shortland.

This item is from the Auckland office of Archives New Zealand.

Reference: ACFM 8180 AP2 12 3446/73

For further enquiries please email Auckland.Archives@dia.govt.nz