By Jennifer Mackley
Skegness Through The Years: Part 5
This is an extract from the book "Skegness Through The Years"
Chapter One
Skegness – the village
Skegness was a sleepy backwater for most of the time before the early part of the nineteenth century. It is true that in Roman times roads reached the shoreline in several places. Burgh le Marsh is known to have been a Roman town with a shore fort near Skegness. There was probably a ferry from there across to Thornham, near Brancaster, in Norfolk. Moreover, there were signs of a flourishing town in the early sixteenth century, but the ‘ness’ or nose of Skegness (a ridge of sand dunes which formed a promontory south-south-east from near Ingoldmells) gave way and, by 1526, the old town of Skegness began to be submerged by the incoming sea. When Leyland visited that part of the country in 1540, the “sumtyme great haven town” which traded in Baltic timber had completely disappeared.
In 1568, the Commissioners of Sewers arranged for the building of a new bank to act as a sea defence. The Roman Bank north of Lumley Square in Skegness became this new sea defence. It was completed in 1574. One hundred years later in 1670 Lord Castleton enclosed the outer marshes with a Green Bank between the High Street and North Shore Road, leaving the muddy foreshore outside the enclosure. This eventually became the sand dunes of the ‘jungle’. The land remained in the hands of the Saunderstons for another fifty years, but when the 5th Viscount and only Earl of Castleton died without an heir in 1723, he left his entire fortune to Thomas Lumley, the son of his cousin the 1st Earl of Scarbrough. In 1856 Richard George succeeded to the title and became 9th Earl of Scarborough. He is widely seen as being the ‘father’ of modern day Skegness.
During the early seventeenth century, wool production was the basis of the rural economy. The Lincolnshire marshland, as distinct from the Fens, made great sheep and cattle pasture. It consisted of a large green fertile plain between the Wolds and the sea, about 45 miles long and between 5–10 miles wide from Wainfleet to the Humber. In 1636, the grazing area around Skegness supported 1200 sheep and a large number of cattle and horses. There were very few trees in and around Skegness. What wood there was came from shipwrecks or from the Wolds, consequently the houses of the time were built of mud and stud.
During the eighteenth century, coal was landed at Skegness, but not in particularly large quantities. Burrell Massingberd imported coal in his own ships around 1726. Most of his ships docked in Boston, but some supplies he sent up the coast to Skegness for his own use at Gunby Hall and for the use of his tenants and neighbours. During the early part of the nineteenth century, about 6,000 tons of coal a year were brought in by sea from Wallsend on the Tyne. Billy boys discharged their cargo straight onto the shore and the coal was then carted from there via the Sea View Pullover to a coal yard on Burgh Road or to the coal yard that existed where Tower Gardens is today. Shingle also arrived by sea to supplement that that was dug from pits along what is now Drummond Road. This was used to form the hardcore for some of the roads across the Marshes.
The eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries were also the heyday for smuggling and contraband trading along the Lincolnshire coastline. The most successful smuggling was accomplished on the open sandy shores between the custom stations of Saltfleet and Skegness. Here the shore was backed with sand dunes with gaps where carts could be pulled to and from the beach. These gaps were known as ‘pullovers.’ Along this stretch the locals were skilled in avoiding detection. The old inns were often the meeting place for sailors and others whose activities were not strictly within the law. The Vine is amongst the oldest secular buildings in Skegness and in 1902, a skeleton with brass buttons was found in the walls. It is believed to be a Customs Officer who had disappeared years earlier.
Chapter Two
The ‘new cult of sea bathing’
The cult of sea bathing came relatively late to the Lincolnshire coast, partly because of the remoteness of the coast and the lack of decent roads. In earlier times, the area around Skegness was not considered to be healthy. The inhabitants were subject to ague and fevers produced by the effluvia, generally termed ‘marsh masmata’. It was thought that this came from the stagnant water in the marshes and fens. The enclosure, which took place almost unobtrusively around Skegness at the beginning of the seventeenth century, caused the minimum of distress, but the subsequent drainage of the fens and marshes did much to improve the general health of the inhabitants.
Freiston Shore, ‘the Brighton of the middle classes in Lincolnshire’ was the principal Lincolnshire bathing place in 1786. Initially it consisted of ‘two inns behind a clay wall looking out over an expanse of sand and samphire towards the Wash’. Sea bathing was reputed to be good for ‘all scorbutic complaints, sore legs, sore eyes, surfeits, hard drinking, nervous habits, hydrophobia and poor appetite’. Freiston Shore was popular because it was situated only a few miles from Boston and therefore fairly easy to get to. As with Brighton, people went there to see and be seen. Sea bathing at Freiston Shore lasted something over the century, but then it dwindled as the coast silted up and access to other parts of the Lincolnshire coastline became easier.
By the beginning of the nineteenth century Skegness too was feeling the benefit of the current preoccupation with the healthy aspects of sea bathing. As early as 1784, the Vine was advertising in the London General Evening News. However, even as late as 1826, Skegness still did not merit an entry of its own in White’s Directory. There were only a few paragraphs at the end of the entry for Wainfleet, including the fact that ‘Skegness, until lately an obscure village, is rising in celebrity both as a bathing place and as a port. It has several private lodging houses and two large and commodious hotels which are provided with warm and cold shower baths and can each make up 30 beds.’ By 1851, the village still had only 366 inhabitants, a few earning their living as fishermen and the rest employed on farms, or working in the new hotels. Some of the wealthier families from in and around Lincolnshire now came to Skegness in the summer months. From the latter part of the previous century, there had been a stagecoach that ran three times a week from Spilsby to Boston, then on to Spalding and Peterborough. Later a diligence ran on Sunday and Thursday from Boston to Wainfleet and Skegness. During the bathing season, this ran everyday, or a horse and cart could be hired from some of the not too distant villages. By the middle of the century the Peterborough to Grimsby railway line was in use. The train passed about a mile west of Burgh le Marsh and the Skegness hotels sent a horse drawn bus to bring the guests the six or seven miles from the station to the hotels.
The Skegness Hotel was built in 1770. It was renamed first as Enderby’s Hotel in 1828 and later in 1851 it became known as the Vine. It was the first hotel to be built to attract visitors who were interested in the new cult of sea bathing. Joseph Dickinson was the landlord in 1772. It was noted that bathing machines were there in 1784, but when the Hon. John Byng arrived in the summer of 1791, he found it ‘a vile and shabby place’ with ‘no garden, no walk, no billiard room, nor anything for comfort or temptation.’ Things slowly began to improve and ten years later, with George Pigot in charge, the hotel could boast of 20 bedrooms, a garden and a bowling green. Furthermore by 1805 John Stafford had installed ‘improved conveniences for heating sea water for bathing.’ By 1806 the Skegness Hotel was clearly popular with the gentry as ‘Lady Ingleby Amcott presides and with a condescending attention promotes the conviviality and entertainment of the company.’ Also ‘The Dowager Countess of Rothes and the family from Gunby Park dined the other day and the following day a great influx of visitors from Spilsby and the neighbouring town … augmented the party at dinner to upwards of sixty,’ reported the newspaper. Later, in 1816, John Stafford made the bridle road from Croft Bank to the Skegness Hotel into a ‘commodious carriage road’ allowing better access for his upper class visitors.
By this time there was a rival establishment to the Skegness Hotel in the New Hotel. This, it is said, was originally built by the Rev. Edward Walls as a hostel for his friends, but John Petty took it over and in 1805 acquired a new bathing machine for the hotel. Thomas Melson added a second in 1809. He also added a ‘most commodious warm sea bath’ and a shower bath in 1818. Ten years later Joseph Hildred took over the hotel. He advertised the hotel in the Mercury and was known to have placed the following advertisement on 21st June 1844. ‘This Hotel is very pleasantly situated on the Eastern Coast and commands very extensive views of the German Ocean. Vessels of all descriptions from London and the North are constantly passing and repassing in sight’. When he died in 1848, his widow, Sarah, took over the running of the hotel. It was she who added a billiard room upstairs in 1850 and enlarged the hotel in 1855. Her son Charles took over in 1874, by which time the New Hotel had acquired the family name and was known as Hildred’s Hotel.
However, at the beginning of the nineteenth century the Lincolnshire seaside was still only for the relatively well off. Apart from the two hotels in Skegness, there were possibly some 23 houses that could have taken in lodgers, but the population of this small village was still only 134, which was less than the neighbouring Wainfleet All Saints with its population of 506 and Wainfleet St. Mary’s, population 421. It was described, in 1827, by an anonymous writer as being ‘a retired situation, well adopted for the resort of invalids. It has not usually so much company as Freiston Shore because it is much further from Boston, but for a place where ease and quiet and comfort may be obtained at a reasonable expense, few places can compare with Skegness’.
The poet Tennyson, who was born in Somersby in 1809, was a frequent visitor to Skegness. As a child, he and his parents travelled in a ‘booby-hutch’, a covered cart, with the family of the Rev. Drummond Rawnsley (of Halton Holegate, near Spilsby) and stayed at the Moat House. Edward Walls built this one room thick house in 1780 for his sister, but later it was let to visitors. It stood just behind the Green Bank (now Drummond Road) and faced the open shore. There was a removable plank bridge from the front door to the Bank. This meant that the young Tennyson could run straight out onto the sandy bank, across the beautiful hard sands, through the salt-water creeks and so to the sea. In later years Tennyson stayed at Enderby’s Hotel where he could be seen ‘a raavin and taavin upon the sand hills in his shirt sleeves an’ all composing poetry aloud’.
In 1845 Henry Winn, parish clerk, poet, shopkeeper and a self-educated man of considerable talent who lived in Fullesby, visited his brother in Halton Holegate after a period of sickness. He wrote in his diary of 9th September 1845:
Hired a horse and cart [at Halton Holegate] this morning and accompanied by my brother, Richard, and sister, Harriet, proceeded to Skegness, a pleasant village on the seacoast. This day was the Annual Life Boat Regatta and meeting of the Wainfleet branch of the shipwrecked fishermen and mariners’ society instituted in 1839. The day was a splendid occasion, and considering the time of the harvest, it was really astonishing to see the concourse of people assembled at the village and the number of carriages of almost every description exceeded all I have seen before.
In spite of the fact that Skegness was gaining a reputation as a bathing resort, the villagers were still mostly employed on the land. Kelly’s Post Office Directory of 1849 listed only thirteen professional and trades people in Skegness in that year. The village, itself, consisted of four roads: High Street, Wainfleet Road, Roman Bank and Burgh Road, with a scattering of dwellings mainly connected to the farms. The New Hotel is marked on a map of 1849 (see Map 2), with a collection of cottages along the western half of the street. The Vine Hotel appears to be situated in the middle of nowhere. Drummond Road is only a sandy track. The Old Ship Inn, originally built in 1830, was on the opposite side of Roman Bank to the present building erected in the 1930s and fields surround St. Clement’s Church.
Chapter Three
The Coming of the Railway
Not everyone was in favour of the success the railway was having in England. In 1829, the Duke of Wellington said that he was against the railways because “it would encourage the lower orders to move about.” He was right. The railway continued to expand throughout the country, allowing more and more of the lower classes to travel further afield.
The Manchester, Sheffield and Lincolnshire Railway, terminating in Grimsby, and the East Lincolnshire Railway (Boston to Grimsby) opened in 1848. From that moment, the nature of the village of Skegness changed. This railway had a station at Burgh le Marsh. The hotel proprietors of Skegness were quick to point out that their part of the Lincolnshire coast was now within easy reach of Burgh station. Each sent an omnibus to meet the trains. The fare was one shilling. The gentle influx of well-to-do visitors was gradually being replaced by people from the industrial towns of the East Midlands, Yorkshire and London. Certainly, during the summer months the visitors could outnumber the residents many times over. In 1861, 3,000 people attended the races in Skegness, practically ten times the resident population. In 1871, a single-track branch line was laid between Firsby and Wainfleet. Atkin’s omnibus met the trains and took the passengers to Skegness. The single fare was one shilling, the return fare 1/6d (7.5p)
Two years later, the single track was extended a further five miles to terminate at Skegness. The visitors could now come all the way to the seaside village and come they did in huge numbers. The extension to Skegness was opened on 28th July 1873 just in time to take advantage of the statutory August Bank Holiday (the first Monday in August). All workers were entitled to a holiday on that day thanks to Lubbock’s Act of 1871. During the season, thousands of excursionists from the manufacturing districts came to enjoy the sea air and, much to the annoyance of some of the villagers, the railway company started running trains for day trips on Sundays. The single track was not doubled until 1900, so trains coming in and out of Skegness were using the same track. This meant that often the return journeys could run well into the night, with the last train sometimes leaving as late as 2:30 the following morning.
Cheap Day Excursions were run from Nottingham, via Grantham, departing at 7:40 am. Half-Day Specials were offered from Boston. The Bank Holiday Gala of 1874 saw the arrival of 10,000 trippers when the population of Skegness was still only just over 500. In May 1875, a charter train from Kirkstead took 220 people to Skegness to enjoy the ‘boating, bathing and other amusements’, followed by a knife and fork supper at the Sea View Hotel. In 1876 the Great Northern Railway advertised a range of Cheap Day Specials to the Skegness races held on the sands in front of the Sea View Hotel. These Cheap Day Specials attracted between 10,000 and 12,000 day trippers. The Day Excursions increased rapidly with no less than 220,000 excursionists coming to Skegness in 1878. By 1881, 25,000 people attended the races and although the resident population of Skegness was now on its way to 1,500, it was still completely unprepared for the influx of visitors who came the following year. In July and August 1882, the excursionists were descending on Skegness at a rate of between 10,000–12,000 a week, culminating in a staggering 20,000 on August Bank Holiday Monday.
The middle of the 1880s saw a marked decline in the number of excursionists arriving in Skegness, mainly due to the depression affecting the industrial catchment areas. Even so in 1890 Skegness was described as ‘the noisiest and most crowded of the Lincolnshire sea-side places, except Cleethorpes, invaded every day during the summer by an enormous number of excursionists from the Midland counties’, but ‘after 6pm the place is again nearly emptied’. However, by the beginning of the twentieth century the visitors to Skegness began steadily increasing again from 226,887 in 1902; to 321,260 in 1907; 356,409 in 1910 until by 1913 the total number of passengers exceeded three quarters of a million for the first time. The following year in the eight weeks up to the beginning of August 1914, the figure rose to 407,000, but once England was at war the German Ocean no longer held the same appeal. The vast number of trains that had been available to bring excursionists to the seaside were needed to transport the newly recruited soldiers. Moreover, those of the population not actually fighting in the war had other constraints on their time. The heyday of the railway, as far as Skegness was concerned, was over, at least for the foreseeable future.
Chapter Four
Skegness – the town
It was in the late 1870s that the 9th Earl of Scarbrough decided to transform his small coastal village into a lively seaside resort. The boom in farming that had occurred during the French war began to decline with the defeat of the French at Waterloo in 1815. This decline had little effect on the small population of Skegness, which increased from 132 in 1811 to 366 in 1851. There was less demand for agricultural labour, but for the local inhabitants there was the beginning of a small tourist industry and some jobs could be found in the new hotels. However, the decline in agriculture meant that the Earl had to find other ways to safeguard his wealth. He was quick to realise the potential of Skegness as a seaside resort and he, along with his agent Tippet, decided that a ‘Grand Plan’ (see Map 4) was needed to prevent the village from growing haphazardly. He employed the services of Gilbert Dashper, a solicitor, and a Lincolnshire architect by the name of John Whitton, to draw up a plan for the creation of a new seaside town.
He was not the first man to think about transforming a coastal village. The pattern of one-man resort development had begun almost fifty years earlier. New Brighton, Fleetwood and Herne Bay had been founded in the 1830s; Llandudno in the late 1840s and Saltburn in the 1860s. Not all of these had been successful. Llandudno’s growth was long delayed and New Brighton hardly grew at all, but the Earl and Tippet knew that if they could get the railway to Skegness, then Skegness could be transformed into a thriving community.
The Earl had a vision for his new town. He wanted watering places, wide streets, attractive parades and other amenities. He wanted new hotels, boarding houses, pleasure gardens, esplanades and a pier. When the railway arrived in 1873, Tippet had already had the valuer J.H. Vessey inspect the foreshore of Skegness with ‘a view of offering the land for the erection of villas’. The new town was planned going north from the main village street thus allowing the farmers to keep the better grazing ground to the south and west. The new houses were to be built between Roman Bank and the sea and as the development spread, tenant farmers were forced to leave the land. Although the ‘Grand Plan’ was not drawn up until 1878, many acres of farmland north of the old village street had been taken from the tenants (chiefly William Everington). Where the Earl’s jurisdiction could not be questioned there was little difficulty in evicting tenants, but some of the tenants living on Roman Bank came under the jurisdiction of the Commissioners of Sewers and to obtain their eviction the solicitors Tweed & Stephen were heavily involved. However, very little was paid out in compensation. By 1879, the amount of compensation was only just over £500.
Plans were exhibited at railway stations in Nottingham, Derby, Leicester, Boston, Lincoln, Grantham, Peterborough, Grimsby, Sheffield, Leeds, Bradford, Doncaster and at King’s Cross. They showed that 787 houses were to be built in the new town. Along with the houses, there was the need for a proper infrastructure. All this activity required skilled workmen. Although some of the villagers could act as labourers, there was a serious shortage of the skilled workers needed for this transformation of Skegness. There was also, in the beginning, a serious shortage of accommodation for those workers coming from the industrial heartland. Some could travel daily from Wainfleet, Burgh or Winthorpe but others had to come from other parts of Lincolnshire or from the East Midland towns now connected by the railway. These workers would certainly need to lodge locally.
We have seen already that in Kelly’s Post Office Directory of 1849 only thirteen professional and trades people were listed in Skegness (out of a population of approximately 350). Seven of these were farmers, with Mrs Elizabeth Everington also being listed as a Coal Dealer. The other professional and trades people consisted of the School Master, a Shopkeeper, a Blacksmith, a Boot maker and the two landlords of the Vine and the New Hotel. By 1872, the year before the railway came directly to Skegness, the population statistics were very similar to those of 1849, but the nature of the village was already changing. There were still seven farmers listed, but now several tradesmen lived in Skegness, including a Boat maker, a Bricklayer, a Carpenter and a Joiner. There were also more people catering for the holidaymakers. Samuel and William Tuckworth were Bathing Machine Proprietors and V.C. Crow was the Omnibus Carrier. Skegness could now boast of three shopkeepers and ten people were listed as either a Boarding House keeper or a Lodging House keeper. Mrs Almond had become the Post Mistress. A Coast Guard Officer, a Justice of the Peace, a Parish Clerk, a Sexton, a Curate and the Vicar of Friskney completed the list.
By 1881, eight years after the railway arrived at Skegness, the population had risen to a staggering 1332, almost 1,000 more people than ten years earlier. It was during these years that the Earl of Scarbrough began the transformation of his small agricultural village. He had a vast building project in hand and the coming of the railway meant that workers could come from further afield to take up employment. There were jobs in the building industry, the services for the new town and in the newly built shops, lodging houses, hotels and other amenities needed for the day-trippers and holiday visitors. In 1871, 59% of the inhabitants of Skegness were born either in the village itself or within a five-mile radius. By 1881, Skegness had the power to attract almost 1,000 people from outside that five-mile radius.
In January of 1882, Tippet could tell Mr Cockshott of the Great Northern that
Skegness is steadily and satisfactorily advancing: there are more buildings now in progress than at any time since we started; and of a better class. There is not a house to be let in the place; the amusements and attractions for the visitors are increasing every year, and there is now accommodation for an unlimited number of people. We only want them down and they will readily come if the facilities are offered to them to do so.
The houses and shops stretched almost the length of Lumley Road and boarding houses were beginning to appear along the Parades and on Drummond Road, Rutland Road and Algitha Road.
In December of the same year one of the five freehold land societies owning land in Skegness began laying out a new road (now known as Grosvenor Road) by laying the drainage pipes before being in a position to offer the building plots for sale.
The boom continued until 1883, (just 10 years after the arrival of the railway) but this was the peak. In May 1884, The Herald stated that ‘not many new buildings have been erected in Skegness during the past winter’ the only record being of 10 cottages completed by Mr Joseph Crawshaw in the new road off Wainfleet Road. By 1886, the situation was much worse, for by then Skegness was suffering the effects of the general depression. Some idea of the extent of this is given by the figures of the number of excursionists carried by the Great Northern Railway to Skegness from 1881–1885. The figures below were printed in the Skegness Herald.
April – September
1881 195,671
1882 230,277
1883 213,299
1884 224,225
1885 118,473
The population figures for Skegness taken from the census of 1881 and 1891 show nothing of the extent the effects of the depression might have had on the town’s people. In fact, the census reports a slight increase from 1332 in 1881 to 1488 in 1891. However, it is possible that these figures could hide a significant fall in the population, probably after 1883 but before the returns for 1891. It is known that the builder, T.S. Kassel, who built Rutland Terrace, could only sell the end part (what is today the Masonic Hall) and therefore was forced into bankruptcy. Other builders could well have suffered the same fate, causing hardship to their suppliers. This, coupled with a decline in the number of visitors, could have affected the livelihood of many others in the town.
Chapter Five
Amenities for the benefit of the inhabitants of Skegness
The Earl of Scarbrough in his ‘Grand Plan’ did not just concern himself with accommodation for the residents and the holidaymakers, there was also a vast infrastructure that needed to be organised, if the town was to progress satisfactorily. As mentioned earlier, the huge building project needed many craftsmen and labourers. These people, as well as those who had come to open businesses, had to know that if they brought their families to settle in Skegness, then, as well as adequate housing, there would be churches, schools, clean drinking water and a system in place to deal with law and order.
The main ingredients needed to ensure that this enormous building project continued without interruption was a constant supply of money and a constant supply of bricks. Originally, the Earl of Scarbrough leased the brickworks from James Warth, a local farmer, but he soon found it was impossible to meet the demand for bricks, so in 1882 he bought the Warth and Dunkley brickworks on the Wainfleet Road. By April 1883 new sheds, offices and kilns had been built and two new machines were installed, one of which was capable of producing 1,000 bricks an hour. John Carter opened a second brickworks situated on the Burgh Road in 1882, thus making sure that there would be an ample supply of bricks. There were 170 houses built by 1877 with approximately 200 more added in the five years between 1877 and 1882.
The Gas Company was formed in 1877 and, in 1882, the gasworks were erected on Alexandra Road, near to the railway, at a cost of £3,500. Mr Foster was the manager. The waterworks were constructed in 1879. This belonged to the Earl of Scarbrough, but was managed by Mr Philips and was supplied from an artesian well on the Burgh Road, about half a mile from the town. The water was described as of the ‘purest and best quality’. A massive 60ft. tower was erected at the works, on top of which was a storage tank capable of holding 10,000 gallons. The water was forced into the tank by a powerful steam pump. Both the gasworks and the waterworks were extended in the 1920s. Also in 1879 a Sewage Farm and works was begun at Cow Bank (now a nature reserve). The scheme, devised by the Durham engineer, D. Balfour, was for land treatment rather than a discharge into the sea, thus making sure that the beaches were kept clean. The Earl of Scarbrough gave £5000 towards the cost. The sanitary authority paid the remaining £1,700. However, it was 1882 before it became fully operational.
St Matthew’s Church was the central point of the Earl’s original plan. He donated the site in the middle of his wide central boulevard and gave £3,000 towards the building costs. The foundation stone was laid in 1879 and the church, built of stone in the Early English Style according to the design of James Fowler of Louth, was opened in 1880. The old village church of St Clement’s, built in the sixteenth century, was seen by the Earl as too small for the increasing population of his new town. The Reverend Francis Baldwin was the first rector at the new church. He came from the vicarage of the Earl of Scarbrough at Maltby in Yorkshire. A Primitive Methodist Chapel had been built on Roman Bank in 1836 when the population of the village was no more than two hundred. A larger chapel, probably made out of wood, was built in 1848 near to where the railway station was eventually situated, only to be replaced by another chapel on Roman Bank in 1899. In 1837 the Wesleyan Chapel was erected in the High Street. This too was replaced by a larger building, situated on Algitha Road, in 1882. The Wesleyan Manse was built in Lumley Road in 1899.
Other religious denominations wanted to bring their particular religious beliefs to the growing population of the town. An inaugural meeting of the Skegness Baptist Church was held in 1894 in the ‘tin tabernacle’ in Beresford Avenue. This had originally been used as St Paul’s Free Church of England. It had been the home of a breakaway group of Anglicans led by H.V. Tippet. In 1888, this group left St. Matthew’s Church, accusing the Rev. Baldwin of ‘popish practices’. However, six or seven years later the group rejoined St. Matthew’s Church when the new rector was installed. The local Baptists took over the ‘tin tabernacle’, which was eventually replaced in 1911 by a new brick building. This new church kept the name of St. Paul and became known as St. Paul’s Baptist Church. The first Roman Catholic Church, Sacred Heart, was opened in 1898 in Grosvenor Road. It had cost £500 to build and had seating for a congregation of 500. The Salvation Army established a separate corps in Skegness, formed at a meeting in a High Street café in 1913.
A citadel was later opened in the High Street on 9th March 1929.
In 1839, a Penny School was opened on the west side of Roman Bank, where now there are the school cottages. The school building was enlarged in 1850, but was still considered ‘a poking little hole’. The Earl of Scarbrough donated a new site, on the corner of Ida Road and Roman Bank, for a larger Skegness National Endowed School. He also gave £500 to help with the building costs. The school, which opened in 1880, had room for about 200 pupils. Abraham Porter was the schoolmaster. In addition to this larger school, the County Council Infants’ School was opened on Cavendish Road in 1908. Skegness also had some private boarding schools. Essendon Girls’ School was at the north end of Rutland Terrace where the Masonic Hall is today. Brythwen High School was opened in 1899 in what, until recently, was the Lyndhurst Club on the corner of Lumley Avenue and Algitha Road. Several more private boarding schools opened their doors between the wars, the most notable being the Orient Girls’ School and the Preparatory School for Boys on Scarbrough Avenue, occupying what is now the Charnwood Hotel and adjacent buildings; the Inglewood Preparatory School in Ida Road and the Seacroft Preparatory School for Boys on Seacroft Esplanade (now a nursing home).
Skegness was administered by the ‘Skegness Parish Vestry’ until 1885, but then a Local Government Board was elected to take over the running of the town. This lasted for ten years until 1895 when Skegness became an Urban District Council. At a meeting of the Parish Vestry in 1882, twelve local men were appointed to serve as constables. All had other occupations. A Police Station was built on Roman Bank that same year, at a cost of £1,200. It had three cells and a courtroom for occasional use. There was also suitable accommodation for the Inspector, Mr. Eggleston. In 1908 Skegness was allocated its own petty sessional court that was convened only during the summer months. A new courthouse was built in 1929, next to the Police Station, which was used all the year round.
Only half of the Earl’s ‘Grand Plan’ was developed. Scarbrough Avenue, which the Earl saw as the main shopping street and the central avenue in the original plan, became the edge of the new Skegness. The shopkeepers wanted the shops, originally planned for Scarbrough Avenue, to be nearer to the railway station. They wanted the excursionists to pass them on the way to the beach, so the private houses that had been built on Lumley Road were gradually turned into shops. However, with the exception of the Market Place, the Winter Gardens and the Aquarium, the layout of the town was almost perfectly in accordance with his plan, even to the position of the ground plan for the reading room and the school. The Market Place came to nothing because it was realised that the Skegness hinterland was too limited and was already served by markets at Wainfleet, Alford and Burgh, although the market in Burgh was much in decline. A fortnightly Cattle Market was opened near the railway station, but that only lasted a few years. George Ball, an auctioneer, started a new cattle market near the Gasworks in 1923, but by 1937 that too had closed.
In 1870, the first Post Office in Skegness was opened in the High Street, run by Mrs Almond. In 1888, the Post Office was moved to Lumley Road and then in 1905 it was rehoused on the corner of Algitha Road and Roman Bank. A new General Post Office and Telephone Exchange was built on the opposite side of Roman Bank in 1929. As well as the Post Office, Kelly’s 1885 directory also listed ‘Sutton and Co. Parcels Delivery’ with Thomas Locke as the agent.
Bill Berry opened a cycle shop on the High Street in 1895. It later became High Street Motor Engineers. By 1910, a charabanc had already replaced the horse drawn bus service from the Lion Hotel to the Royal Oak at Winthorpe. In 1922, Bill Berry started the town bus service. He sold the bus company to Tom Cary in 1925.
Skegness Steam Laundry Co. was established on Roman Bank in 1877. It was progressively enlarged to become eventually Fenlands Laundries. The Hygienic Sanitary Laundry Co. opened in Wainfleet Road. Mr J. Hunter was the managing director in 1907, but unlike its rival it survived only until the 1930s.
The first edition of the Skegness Herald appeared in 1882. Until then the main source for news and advertising was the Stamford Mercury. The office for the Skegness Herald was situated at the back of 17 Lumley Road where John Avery printed and published the paper that appeared on Fridays. It was the only local paper for more than twenty years until in 1909 Charles Henry Major published the Skegness News. A few years later in 1915 Major took over the Skegness Herald but it only lasted another couple of years before it ceased publication in 1917. The Boston based Lincolnshire Standard launched the Skegness Standard in 1922.
Not everything in the new town was purely functional. There was an ornate fountain complete with gaslights standing in Lumley Square. It was moved to the newly completed Marine Gardens (now the site of the Embassy Theatre) in 1888 and later, minus the gaslights, it became the main water feature in the Fairy Dell Paddling Pool. The planners of the new town decided that Lumley Road (which had become the main shopping street) needed a focal point where it met the Grand Parade. It was decided that a Clock Tower would be built to commemorate Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee. The clock tower was designed by the Liverpool architect Edmund White and built by W.H Parker & Son of Boston in 1899. It rises to a height of 56 feet and the design makes reference in the upper part to Big Ben at the House of Commons in London. The mixture of brick and stone in the lower part was a reminder of all the new buildings that were being built at the time of its erection. The Countess of Scarbrough unveiled the completed tower on 11th August 1899.
Chapter Six
Catering for the influx of visitors to Skegness
When the trains first began bringing large numbers of excursionists to Skegness, there was nothing for the visitors to do, except breathe in the invigorating air, walk along the beach or paddle in the sea. Those not staying in the hotels found that there were no catering facilities for the increasing number of day-trippers arriving during the summer. The resident population of Skegness was still only just over 350 in 1883, but it was not long before enterprising locals began to set up stalls offering refreshments and other commodities, a practice the Earl of Scarbrough tried to stop when he started building his new town.
Not everyone regarded the changes in Skegness as positive. Some looked upon the influx of visitors with ‘a feeling somewhat akin to dread’. The local newspaper reported that ‘the excursionists drop down upon the place in numbers so overwhelming as to leave the town as bare of nutriment as was Egypt after a visitation of locusts’. It also claimed that the change in character of Skegness was ‘driving away respectable families who were wont to visit the quiet spot’. By 1883, the disquiet had not abated. The Skegness Herald deplored the arrival of ‘shoals of labourers on the Sabbath’.
Before the introduction of the Earl of Scarbrough’s ‘Grand Plan’ there were already Bathing Machines installed both at the Vine and the New Hotel. By the beginning of the nineteenth century the Vine had a garden and a bowling green. However, all the activities were designed to entertain the wealthy classes. The village of Skegness could still only boast of having three shopkeepers. It had hardly changed from the small agricultural village it had been for many decades.
It was obvious to the Earl and his agent, Tippet, that there was a need to provide amenities that would attract the visitors to his new resort. In the original plan for the new town, provision was made for the construction of a pier. This was commissioned in 1879 and completed in 1881. The Pier was a magnificent 1842 feet in length and had plenty of comfortable shelters and seating along the full length on both sides. At the furthest point there was a very handsome Pavilion, refreshment rooms, a bookstall and shops where presents might be purchased. The concert room in the Pavilion had seating for up to 600 people. Here concerts were given daily including on Sundays. There was a special staircase that led from the pier deck to the level of the roof of the concert hall, where the visitors could enjoy a panoramic view of the new town in one direction and gaze out over the German Ocean in the other.
A year after the opening of the Pier, the Skegness Steamboat Company was formed. It chartered a number of paddle steamers running trips to Grimsby, Boston and King’s Lynn. A landing stage was built at the end of the Pier and visitors could embark and land three hours either side of high tide. In 1883 the ‘May’, one of the largest paddle steamers on the east coast operated throughout the summer, providing luxury accommodation for up to 255 passengers. There were day trips to Hunstanton for 3s (15p) and to the Lynn Well lightship, including a landing and a look around the ship for 1/6d (7.5p). The day trips to Hunstanton sometimes allowed time for a visit to Royal Sandringham. The ‘Spindrift’ was another popular vessel using the pier head, but the last of the paddle steamers was probably the favourite, the ‘Privateer’ of Boston. However, during the latter part of the nineteenth century sandbanks had been building up in the Wash, making wide detours necessary. In addition, the pier landing stage became unsafe. When in 1911 the landing stage was dismantled, the company could not afford to replace it. The ‘Privateer’ operated from the beach for one more summer, but then the service was discontinued.
The Skegness Turkish Hot and Cold Swimming Baths were opened in Scarbrough Avenue in 1883 at the cost of £4,000. There were separate pools for ladies and gentlemen, private baths and the Turkish Baths. The water supply was through a gravity pipeline from the sea, boosted by a suction pump. When mixed bathing became permissible at the beginning of the twentieth century, the ladies’ pool was boarded over to become the King’s Theatre and the men’s pool was opened to both sexes. There was a reading room, open Monday to Friday from 9am to 6pm, situated in Scarbrough Avenue, adjacent to the Skegness Baths where the holidaymakers could, for the charge of one penny, read the daily and weekly newspapers and various periodicals.
On the site of an old coal yard, just west of the Grand Parade, the new Pleasure Gardens, with a lake and various paths through the lawns and flowerbeds, was laid out towards the end of the 1870s. At one end was a Pavilion containing dining rooms, a concert hall and a ballroom. In front of the Pavilion was a bandstand where orchestras and brass bands occasionally played. The gardens were a green oasis where the holidaymakers could relax away from the hustle and bustle of the sea front. In 1888, south of the pier, the Earl of Scarbrough arranged for grass and shrubs to be planted. His idea was to give the Parade a more pleasing aspect, but more importantly, it was hoped that the build-up of sand that had occurred since the retaining wall was built a year earlier would be halted. This area became known as the Marine Gardens.
Each year, from around the 1890s, the Battle of the Flowers was held. This was carnival time and Lumley Road and the Parades were garlanded with flags and flowers. Many people came to see the passing procession. A switchback railway was built on a large part of the Jungle frontage on North Parade in 1885, but was dismantled in 1912. There was a fairground on the central beach where, in 1910, Cartwright’s Great Wheel was among the attractions. On the North Parade in the 1920s Charlie Brewster’s Ducking Pond caused much merriment among the spectators. When a wooden ball hit the bull’s-eye, the fall guy in a wet suit fell through the divided seat and ended up with a good soaking. Jim Lewis’ Mini Zoo was another attraction on North Parade in the early 1920s, with a bear, baboon, monkeys, parrots and other ‘wonders’ of the jungle.
It was in 1900 that Fred Clements brought his first concert party to Skegness. Within a few years, he had became the resort’s leading entertainments entrepreneur. His first ‘theatre’ was the Happy Valley on the sands. He then leased the Lawn Theatre, built in 1911 by Bass, the owners of the Hildred’s Hotel. He also built the Arcadia Theatre in 1911 and the Tower Theatre in 1921. Clements believed that motion pictures could well have a profitable future and the Tower was used as a cinema almost from the start. After the Tower Theatre was built, the Lawn Theatre was let to Henri DeMond, who turned it into a picture theatre. The Lawn Theatre continued until 1934, when it was closed and the building incorporated into the Hildred’s Hotel. John Henry Canning, a Skegness builder and developer, opened the Central Hall on Roman Bank in 1911. This was used for public meetings, concerts and dances. In the 1920s, Miss Nora Canning held dancing classes there. Later it was converted into the Central Cinema. Burrows and Chilvers’ Chalet Theatre stood on the edge of the Jungle on North Parade in the early 1920s and, for several summers, this was the venue for high-class musical concerts. Before the building of the Chalet, they had an open-air pitch in Marine Gardens, Grand Parade, where candles in ornamental bowls strung between poles illuminated evening performances.
H.B. Sykes of Derby founded the Derbyshire Poor Children’s Seaside Home in the 1890s. The first summer he brought parties of children from poor homes in Derby for a week’s holiday in rented accommodation in the High Street, but later built a much larger establishment on Scarbrough Avenue. The curative qualities of the bracing breezes were ‘in high repute among the medical men of London and the Midlands for its good effect in cases of chest complaints and rheumatism’. The Nottingham and Notts convalescent home for men was built in 1891, followed by one for children eighteen months later with funds provided by Sir C. Seely. Then there was Lady Scarbrough’s Home for Women and Children at Seaview, where patients paid only 5/- (25p) a week. The Holiday Home for Nottingham Girls was opened on Brunswick Drive in 1912. The National Deposit Friendly Society’s Convalescent Home was built on North Parade in 1927 and, one year later, the Derbyshire Miners’ & Friendly Societies’ Convalescent Home was opened, all offering a chance to recuperate at the seaside. In 1929, the Nottingham Poor Children’s’ Holiday Home moved to new premises on Roseberry Avenue after several years in tents and huts. The 1920s was also the decade when tents and caravans came into fashion thus providing more accommodation and freedom for the visitors to come and go as they pleased.
For those who wanted to record their trip to the seaside, there were photographic booths. The earliest known professional photographer in Skegness was Charles Smyth who was established in the High Street in 1882. He later moved into premises on the new Lumley Road. During the season he also had a seafront studio in a wooden hut on the south side of the Clock Tower. Samuel Charles Burnham had another wooden studio on the north side of the Pier from about 1890 until his death in 1913. However, probably the best-known photographic business was that of Alfred Wrate who set up his business at 17 Lumley Road in 1907. Later, the business was run by his wife and family and was the most successful photography firm in Skegness for more than half of the twentieth century. Walking snapshots became popular at the seaside just after the First World War and Mrs Amelia Wrate was soon leading the field. Young men and women in bright orange striped blazers caught the trippers on the parades and esplanades snapping as many as 100 a day. The prints were ready two hours later.
Augustine and Frank Fravigar, of Italian descent, came from Boston to sell ice cream on the beach in 1880. They paid 2/6d (12.5p) a year for their pitch. Three generations of the family sold ice cream, which for many years they manufactured in Alexandra Road. Before cornets and wafers were invented, the ice cream was dispensed in what looked like thick glass eggcups.
The Cricket Ground, near to the railway station was acquired in 1879. In 1886, the Australian Touring Eleven cricket team played on this ground. Sixteen excursion trains brought hundreds of spectators to Skegness. The first game of golf was played on the Seacroft Golf Course in 1898. This was a nine-hole course that was later extended to 18 holes. At the other end of the town, the North Shore Golf Course was completed in 1910. The watching of horse racing on the sands was still a popular pastime, with races taking place on the sands outside the Sea View Hotel. Early in 1899 Bill Berry was part of a syndicate of local businessmen who brought the first car to Skegness. The journey from London with the car travelling at 12 mph took three and a half days. The Daimler was used to provide short rides for visitors. Later, in 1905 motorcar racing took place on the hard sands of Skegness beach. The first meeting was organised by the Notts. Automobile Club. The cars raced along a straight mile long track, with wire netting over the soft sandy patches. In 1929, the course was changed to a two kilometre oval track with hairpin bends at each end and transferred to the north end of the beach.
As the town continued to grow, so did the selection of restaurants and coffee rooms to provide the visitors with refreshments. The Casino, on North Parade, was one such restaurant. It was established in 1922 on the site of an earlier dance hall known as the ‘Alhambra’ that had been built in 1911. As well as a ballroom, the Casino specialized in party catering with seating for 920 at a single sitting. As the years continued, more ideas to appeal to the visitors and residents were to be put in place. In December 1921 the Skegness Council Surveyor, R.H. Jenkins, presented his master scheme for the development of the foreshore that had been purchased from the Earl of Scarbrough for the modest sum of £15,590. Between 1923 and 1937 there were fifteen years of development on what was basically just sand dunes. These sand dunes were transformed into a boating lake, a bathing pool, esplanades, lawns, a rose garden, a ballroom and restaurants, walks and waterways, car parks and bowling greens. This was the biggest transformation to take place in Skegness since the Earl of Scarbrough’s original ‘Grand Plan.’ However, that, together with the developments undertaken by the young entrepreneur, Billy Butlin, who arrived in Skegness in 1925, is another story.
Chapter Seven
Why did it happen?
The small, obscure, agricultural village of Skegness became a flourishing seaside town by the end of the nineteenth century. Would this have happened anyway over a period of time or were there factors that turned Skegness into the main seaside town rather than Ingoldmells or Chapel St Leonard’s?
The decline in agriculture in the early nineteenth century coinciding with the rise in the cult of sea bathing made it only a matter of time before some villages close to the Lincolnshire coast became seaside resorts. The first Lincolnshire village to offer facilities for people wanting to visit the sea was Freiston Shore. It became popular because of its position close to Boston. In a county where the roads were not good, the upper classes could travel to the port of Boston and then without too much difficulty on to Freiston Shore, two or three miles away. It was already popular in the 1780s and remained so for over a century, but the gradual silting up of that part of the coast and improved access to other places along the coast meant that its popularity was dwindling by the middle of the nineteenth century.
The first hotel in Skegness was built in 1770. It was about three quarters of a mile from the little village and certainly not on the road to anywhere in particular, so one can only assume that it was built to attract visitors to the coast. As with the visitors to Freiston Shore, they would have been from the upper classes as it would have been well nigh impossible for any of the working classes, at the end of the eighteenth century, to have the means to travel to the coast unless they were within walking distance. By 1805, a second hotel, built at the eastern end of the main village street, was ready to receive visitors. So we see that even at the beginning of the nineteenth century the village of Skegness was undergoing a gradual change. That change remained gradual for at least another fifty years.
So why did Skegness, rather than other coastal villages in the area become the major seaside resort? One important fact was that one man, the Earl of Scarbrough, owned a large acreage of land close to the village. He could use the land as he wished. Until the middle of the nineteenth century, he and his ancestors had been quite happy to use the land for agriculture. However, with the decline in agriculture, he needed to find another way to safeguard his wealth. The 9th Earl was a man of vision and he could see the potential in moving away from agriculture and towards tourism and the sea. He, along with his agent Tippet, drew up a ‘Grand Plan’ for the area running north from the village High Street to approximately where Castleton Boulevard is today, bounded on the west by Roman Bank and on the east by the sea. He wanted to make sure that the new town had a real structure and that the village would not just grow haphazardly.
Although he had the vision, he could not build the new town without builders, craftsmen and labourers. There were some, in Skegness, who could act as labourers, but the craftsmen would have to come from outside the village. Some could have been found in the local small towns, such as Boston, Louth or Alford, but others would have to come from further afield. From the middle of the nineteenth century, there was a railway station at Burgh le Marsh and, by 1871, there was a station at Wainfleet. This allowed some craftsmen from the industrial Midlands to travel to within six or seven miles of the Lincolnshire coast, but the rest of the journey would have had to be completed on foot or they might have been able to take advantage of the transport sent by the hotels to meet the trains.
It was important that the railway should come to Skegness. The Earl had envisaged visitors coming to his new town in huge numbers. A station in Skegness would allow them easy access to the sea and the town. The Earl would not have had a good return for his initial high investment, if there were not the visitors to take advantage of the growing number of amenities that would be on offer. If the railway to the coast were to have gone to Mablethorpe and bypassed Skegness, then it is possible that the Earl’s ‘Grand Plan’ would, at best, have taken many extra years to come to fruition and at worst, it would have been scrapped altogether. Tippet obviously worked hard at lobbying the Railway Company because on 28th July 1873 the new rail extension from Wainfleet to Skegness was opened.
Now that the railway had arrived the Earl could increase the advertising of his new town by placing maps and other advertising material in the railway stations of the East Midlands, Lincolnshire and Yorkshire and even at King’s Cross. This would bring his ‘Grand Plan’ to the attention of a much wider range of people, not only artisans and businessmen, but also the much needed visitors that the Earl wanted in his new town. All came in huge numbers. A great many settled in the town, so that eight years after the arrival of the railway, the population had quadrupled. In 1871 (two years before the arrival of the railway to Skegness) 59% of the 349 inhabitants of the village were either born there or came from within a five-mile radius. By the time of the 1881 census, there were approximately 1,000 people living in Skegness who were born outside that five-mile radius.
The slow gradual change that had taken place over the previous one hundred years was suddenly catapulted into ten years of upheaval. The speed with which the building boom took place was unprecedented along this part of the coast. After 10 years half of the Earl’s ‘Grand Plan’ had become a reality. There were the houses; new hotels and lodging houses; restaurants and coffee shops; wide streets; attractive Parades and Pleasure Gardens; a Pier and several amenities for the visitors.
However, why was only half of the Earl’s plan completed? It has been difficult to find any information giving a positive reason for this. It was obvious from the plan that the Earl saw Scarbrough Avenue as the central avenue. It is the widest of all the streets and has the church at its central point. Yet the streets to the north of Scarbrough Avenue were never completed. We can only guess at a reason. It is probable that the depression, which affected the whole of England, had a knock on effect for the new town. The frantic building schedule came practically to a halt in 1884 when only ten houses were built that year. The depression continued for many years. As we have seen in Chapter Four, the builder T.S. Kassel was declared bankrupt after being unable to sell most of Rutland Terrace. If, as has been suggested, other builders faced similar problems, they would not have been available to continue building even if the Earl had wanted to. There was also a decline in the number of visitors coming to the town. This obviously had an effect on local businesses, but would it have had an effect on the overall building plan? We know that the Earl envisaged Scarbrough Avenue as his main shopping street, but the shopkeepers wanted their shops to be closer to the station so that the excursionists would pass by on their way to the sea. Most of the shops were opened along Lumley Road and the High Street, thus moving the centre of the town away from Scarbrough Avenue. The symmetry had gone out of the original plan; therefore, it was perhaps not seen as essential to continue. Moreover, in 1884, the 9th Earl died, but Tippet was still there and the 10th Earl was keen, so it seems unlikely that was the reason. It was not until the 1920s and 1930s that attention was turned again to the development of the area north of Scarbrough Avenue. By that time the town planners seemed to have other ideas for the layout of that part of Skegness so the Earl’s Grand Plan was never completed.
We have seen that with the rise in the new cult of sea bathing it would only have been a matter of time before one or more of the coastal villages would have turned into a seaside town. However, there were three main factors, in the middle of the nineteenth century, which helped to turn the village of Skegness into the leading resort on the southeastern part of the Lincolnshire coast. The first was that the coastline was gradually changing causing the area around Freiston Shore to silt up. There was a decline in the number of visitors to that area, but since people were now interested in being by the sea, there was a need to find other parts of the coastline with the potential to become a seaside resort. The second was the fact that the Earls of Scarbrough owned a substantial amount of land to the north of the village. The 9th Earl saw that a change of land use from the traditional grazing to a well-planned new town with an emphasis on tourism would, in the longer term, safeguard his wealth. He was not afraid to back his plan with a large amount of money, knowing that the initial outlay would reap huge rewards. However, even this would not have guaranteed a thriving town if the Earl and Tippet had not persuaded the Railway Company to bring the railway directly to Skegness. It was the railway that allowed for the holidaymakers and day-trippers to come to the new town. Without them, the small obscure agricultural village of Skegness would not have been transformed into the thriving coastal town that it had become by the end of the nineteenth century.
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Misc.
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