The Penny Bank, Scunthorpe - 29 October 2021

The Penny Bank pub, 160 High Street, Scunthorpe.

The history of the building, although evidently a former bank, was very difficult to elicit and a great deal of the effort was made by my partner and sometime editing assistant Gregory Halse. The word 'Bank' is inscribed above the door but is rendered invisible in this picture by the bright sunshine which followed showers.

Today's Penny Bank is closed for refurbishment having originally opened in 2018 and was previously another pub, The Mint, which itself opened in 1988. Thus the bank history goes back a long way but it appears that the building housed the Yorkshire Penny Bank, an earlier incarnation of Yorkshire Bank (now part of Virgin Money), from 1928 to 1980. In 1981, the building was acquired by Barclays although, to be pedantic, it is not clear that they operated a branch there and they put it back on the market in 1986 subsequent to which it became The Mint.

Interestingly, in a town which has suffered badly from industrial and retail decline and in which even many of the pawn shops have closed, all the major banks are represented with the modern HSBC building being particularly striking.

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