DISCOVER SKEGNESS, Lincolnshire

Skegness (informally Skeggy) is a famous seaside resort town in Lincolnshire, England.

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Skegness is home to the original Butlins, built in 1936, and is one of the most, more so in the past, famous traditional English seaside resorts.


HISTORY OF SKEGNESS

The name indicates that Skegness has its origin in the Danish period of settlement in Britain. Although it has been suggested that it looks like a foot, a hypothetical Viking responsible for establishing the earliest settlement on this location, it is much more likely to have derived from words which appear in modern Danish as skæg, beard and næs, nose or in geographical terms, headland.

Longshore drift carries particles of sediment southwards along the Lincolnshire coast but at Skegness, the sand settles out in banks (tombolos) which run at a slight angle to the coast forming the beard. The slightly elevated dune land sheltered the small natural harbour which the Danes found behind the banks. The finer sediment drifts on to find a home in the mud of The Wash, beyond Gibraltar Point.

In August 1642, a consignment of arms and money, probably raised by Queen Henrietta Maria, in the Netherlands for the support of King Charles I's campaign in the Civil War, was forced into Skegness by the ships of the Parliamentarian Earl of Warwick.

Skegness was primarily a fishing village and small port until the arrival of the railway in 1875. The land was part of the Earl of Scarborough's estate and he, or his agent H.V.Tippet saw that the extensive sandy beach could be made attractive to holidaymakers from the industrial towns of the English Midlands, a clientele already developed by Thomas Cook.

He planned the town as a resort from 1877 and it expanded rapidly, but along with many other UK resorts, especially those on the cold North Sea, it lost out to the cheap package holiday boom which opened up Spain (in particular) to the average holidaymaker after World War II currency restrictions were lifted and travellers could leave the UK with more than 50 pounds.

Ingoldmells, the next parish to the north of Skegness was the site of the UK's first Holiday Camp, started by Billy Butlin in 1936. Butlin's is still there today, in modern dress, at the north end of the town, on the road to Ingoldmells.

Skegness had a 1843 foot (562 metre) long pier which was opened on Whit Monday 1881, at that time it was the fourth longest in England. Steamboat trips ran from the pier to The Wash and Hunstanton in Norfolk from 1882 until 1910. In 1919, it was damaged by a drifting ship and it took twenty years to raise the money to fully repair it. Again in 1978, the pier was badly damaged and considerably shortened; this time by severe gales. The pier has since undergone major refurbishment and is now once again a thriving tourist attraction, although it no longer extends far seaward of the high tide line.


SKEGNESS TODAY

In March 2005, Skegness took the top spot in a survey by Yours magazine, looking at the best retirement places in the UK. Yours researchers visited sixty likely towns, and factors involved in judging included house prices, hospital waiting lists, the crime rate, council tax rates, activities and attractions, weather patterns and ease of transport.

It has also been described by Lonely Planet's Great Britain guide as "everything you could want" in a seaside resort.

Today the town's tourist industry mainly caters for working-class holiday-makers and day-trippers from Leicester, Lincoln, Nottingham and other areas of the East Midlands.

Skegness has been dubbed "the Blackpool of the East Coast" or "Nottingham by the Sea", and has a famous mascot, the Jolly Fisherman (designed by John Hassall in 1908 for the Great Northern Railway), and a slogan - Skegness is so bracing - a reference to the chilly prevailing north-easterly winds that can and frequently do blow off the North Sea.

The town is popularly known as Skeg, Skeggy or Skegvegas. Further up the coast are the other holiday resorts of Mablethorpe, Ingoldmells and Chapel St Leonards.

Fine beaches link the coastal towns, and there are many large caravan parks in the surrounding countryside. One caravan park a short distance to the north of the town has its own airfield, with a 755 metre grass runway. Visiting pilots can call the airfield on 132.425MHz, although PPR (Prior Permission Required) is stated for landing. A number of years ago, pleasure flights used to operate from the aerodrome.

The town is served by Skegness railway station, which is the terminus for the Grantham to Skegness Line from Boston. The line to Wainfleet was opened in August 1873 by the Wainfleet and Skegness Railway Company. The A52 passes through the town from Boston to Mablethorpe.

The seafront teems with a variety of ways for visiting tourists to spend their money. The main strip of road along the beach is a kaleidoscope of neon and flashing lights advertising arcade machines, slot machines, fairground rides, crazy golf, fish-and-chip shops and various bars. There are also seasonal shops selling cheap ways to entertain oneself, such as kites and buckets-and-spades - such quieter pleasures can be enjoyed on the long wide award-winning beach, which in summer features a fine herd of donkeys for riding.

The town is also a major centre for bowls, and is the home to the world's premier Meccano exhibition, annually staged in the Embassy Theatre, on the Grand Parade by the seafront.

Behind the Embassy is Botton's Pleasure Beach, featuring roller coasters, mini merry-go-round (the Gallopers), dodgems and many traditional and modern rides, as well as the annual spectacular end-of-season firework display. There are large Morrisons and Tesco supermarkets in the centre of the town near the railway station, and a Co-op in the Hildreds Centre shopping area. Lumley Road is the main shopping area, with plenty of fish and chip shops and pubs.

To the south of the town is Gibraltar Point, a nature reserve on the northern limit of The Wash.


From Wikipedia.org, the Free Encyclopedia

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