Here we go again. Barclays has announced it will shut a further 99 branches throughout 2024 and 2025, including the branch in High Street, Rayleigh.
Every time closures by any bank are announced, customers are left infuriated, although industry chiefs stress that only ten per cent of financial transactions are now done inside a branch.
Of course it wasn’t always like this. In decades past our High Streets were packed with banks and building societies.
Barclays opened its first branch in Southend in 1859 and by the time its Victoria Avenue premises was opened in January1963, it was the company’s 15th branch in the borough.
Now there are barely 15 in the whole of Essex.
One of the company’s branches on Canvey was a quirky sight.
It was housed inside a small bungalow in New Road, as these photos show. The home was sold to Barclays in the 1950s but by 1977 the bank closed down the branch.
Cheque out our nostalgic gallery of old banks in Southend and Canvey.
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