A prominent pub, watchmakers and former butchers' shop that has been empty on a historic high street for more than eight years has been sold at auction.

Having been a butchers from around the 1930s up until its closure, the former Triangle Butchery - and prior to that Pye's - at 87 High Street in Lowestoft went under the hammer this week.

The commercial property sold for almost three times the minimum price it was expected to fetch.

The former Triangle Butchery on Lowestoft's historic High Street in 2021. Picture: Mick HowesThe former Triangle Butchery on Lowestoft's historic High Street in 2021. Picture: Mick Howes (Image: Mick Howes) Previously a fish merchants and artists, back in 1865 87 High Street was run as a watchmaker's but shortly after this it became the Exhibition Stores - with the pub closing somewhere between 1913 and 1921.

Most recently 87 High Street in Lowestoft was purchased by East Suffolk Council in 2020.

Having been closed, boarded-up and left in a "dilapidated condition" in a conservation area, a scheme to restore the shop frontage of the former butchers was given the go-ahead in December 2021.

Earlier this month the council said East Suffolk's cabinet had "approved a recommendation to sell the property at auction, enabling a purchaser, with available capital, to improve the building and bring it back into use."

This led to Auction House East Anglia marketing the commercial property 87 High Street, Lowestoft on a freehold tenure at an online auction.

It went under the hammer on Wednesday, October 23, with a guide price of £20,000 to £40,000 plus fees.

Described as a "Prominent High Street premises in need of full modernisation" with "Consent for residential conversion," the property description from the auctioneers said: "Having been vacant for a number of years this former retail premises now needs full updating and remedial repair."

A spokesman for Auction House East Anglia said the commercial property "sold for £56,500."