Essex House
Lloyds Bank’s Access office in Southchurch.
Southchurch Access
Essex House was another office serving Access in Southend, housing Lloyds Bank’s Access operation. It was built around 1978 with a smoked-glass exterior, and some time later re-clad in white metal panels.
From discussions in the Ros Southend Past in Photos Facebook group, it seems that in strong gales whole panes of glass used to fall out of the building – which may have had something to do with the re-cladding.
From when it was built until around the mid-1980s, Essex House was home to the disaster recovery (backup) computer suite for the Access mainframe; the main production suite was at Priory Crescent. When JCCC moved into its Basildon premises in the mid-1980s, the disaster recovery machine moved to Basildon, while production stayed in Southend until the early 2000s.
Lloyds finally moved out in 2013, first to offices in Chelmsford, before consolidating all of its credit card operations in London.
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Enlarge pictureWe Made It! Essex House Refurbishment Commemorative Brochure
After questions on Ros’ Southend Facebook page about when Essex House was re-clad, Stew Mills donated a huge amount of Access documentation to this archive. This brochure was among it: it gives the exact dates of the refurbishment, details the different phases, and describes many of the problems faced along the way.
6 pages
Use the arrow keys or swipe to turn the pages.
Enlarge pictureWork begins, 1992 
Enlarge pictureMini heat wave 
Enlarge pictureYcnegreme 
Enlarge pictureWork completed, October 1993 
Enlarge pictureAcknowledgements
Memories of Essex House
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