After the UK lost 5,000 High Street branches in a decade, Sea is one of several communities around the country without a bank.
It has been mostly vacant since the Lloyd’s Bank closed in 2018, and it is currently a three-story mixed-use building.
Cheffins expected it to sell for £500,000, but it outperformed the auctioneer’s estimates.
The big structure features a prominent retail shop with a total frontage of 11.8 meters, as well as two substantial duplex flats, all located in the centre of this bustling coastal town.
A new door has been put in an unexpected location in front of a black box by builders remodeling an old Lloyds Bank.
One joker wrote ‘what a dumb place to put a door’ under the nose of the building in Frinton-on-Sea because of the curiously situated doorway.
And it has amused and perplexed passers-by as they walked down Connaught Avenue to observe how the £650,000 property is being transformed into houses and a retail outlet.
According to Cheffins, it was purchased by a local investor.
Last month, Lloyds Banking Group announced that it would close another 28 locations across the UK this year, just two months after closing 60.
In recent years, banks throughout the industry have made significant cuts to their branch networks, claiming that this is required to respond to the rising shift to online services, which has been hastened by the epidemic.
It was revealed earlier this year that the UK had lost roughly 5,000 High Street banks in the last decade, raising concerns that the elderly, fragile, and those living in rural regions are effectively being “shut off” from face-to-face banking.
Across 2012, there were more over 13,300 banks in the UK’s cities, towns, and villages, down from 20,583 in 1988.
However, at the end of last year, that number had plummeted to just 8,810, a remarkable 34% loss in less than a decade.