User:Noswall59/History of Skegness

There is evidence of late Iron-Age and early Roman saltmaking activity along the part of the Lincolnshire coast which Skegness now occupies.^[1] It is possible that a Roman fort existed in the town before being lost to the sea in the late Middle Ages.^[2] The archaeologist Charles Phillips suggested that Skegness was the terminus of a Roman road running from Lincoln through Burgh le Marsh and was also the location of a Roman ferry which crossed The Wash to Norfolk.^[3] It is likely that the Anglo-Saxons used these Roman fortifications as one of several defensive positions along the coast. Later, the Vikings settled in Lincolnshire and their influence is detected in many local place names.^[4] Skegness's name combines the Old Norse words Skeggi and ness, and means either "Skeggi's headland" or "beard-shaped headland" (possibly referring to the banks at an angle to the coast);^[5] Skeggi (meaning "bearded one") may be the name of a Viking settler or it could derive from the Old Norse word skegg "beard" and have been used to describe the shape of the landform.^[6] Skegness was not named in the Domesday Book of 1086. It is usually identified with the Domesday settlement called Tric.^{[7][n 1]} The historian Arthur Owen and the linguist Richard Coates have argued that Tric derived its name from Traiectus, Latin for "crossing", referring to the Roman ferry that Phillips argues launched from Skegness.^{[9][n 2]} The name Skegness appears in the 12th century,^[11] and further references are known from the 13th.^[10]

Natural sea defences which protected a harbour at Skegness in the middle ages.^[12] It was relatively small and its trade in the 14th century was predominantly coastal; its economic fortunes were probably closely related to those of nearby coastal ports, such as Wainfleet, which in turn depended on the larger port at Boston which was heavily involved in the wool trade.^[13] It was also an important fishing port.^[14] During the medieval period the destruction of offshore islands led to silt being deposited along the Lincolnshire coast; as salt-working and drainage intensified, this combined to leave the coast in a constant state of change.^[15] The later medieval period brought frequent storms, which eroded Skegness's sea defences.^[15] Between the 14th and 16th centuries, Skegness was one of several coastal settlements to incur major loss of land to the sea. Local people attempted to make artificial banks, but they were costly.^[16] Rising sea levels further threatened the coast.^[17] In 1525 or 1526 Skegness was largely washed away in a storm, along with the hamlets of East and West Meales.^{[18][19][n 3]}

After the flooding, Skegness was rebuilt along the new coastline.^[20] By 1543, when the antiquarian John Leland visited the town, he noted that "For old Skegnes is now buildid a pore new thing";^[18] the settlement was principally a small farming and fishing village throughout the early modern period,^[21] with the marshland providing good summer pasture for sheep.^[22] Over the course of the sixteenth century, the sea continued to encroach into the land at Skegness, while depositing sand banks further south, leading to the creation of Gibraltar Point.^[23] Much of the land came into the hands of Nicholas Saunderson, 1st Viscount Castleton,^[24] who enclosed 400 acres of saltmarsh in 1627 and claimed more land from the sea south of Skegness.^[25][26] The Lords Castleton had enclosed a large portion of the lands around Skegness by 1740,^[27] over 800 acres.^[28] The Castleton estate passed through the male line which became extinct in 1723 on the death of the 5th Viscount, who bequeathed his estate to his cousin Thomas Lumley; in 1740 Lumley became 3rd Earl of Scarbrough. By 1845, the Scarbrough estate comprised 1,219 acres at Skegness.^{[25][n 4]} Although the population rose above 300 by 1851,^[31] the settlement "was still very much an undeveloped village of fishermen, farmers and farm hands" in the early 1870s.^[32]

Local gentry began visiting the village for leisure reasons from the late 18th century.^[32] The sea air was thought to have health-giving qualities.^[33] To capitalise on this trend, the Skegness Hotel opened in 1770; visitors could reach it by omnibus from Boston, which was the terminus of several stagecoaches.^[34] The first reference to bathing machines on Skegness's shores dates to 1784 though they are thought to have been present earlier.^[32] Private houses also opened their doors to lodgers,^[32] and other hotels opened.^[35][36] Born and raised at Somersby, the poet Alfred Tennyson (later Lord Tennyson) holidayed at Skegness as a young man, often taking walks along the shore from his lodgings at Mary Walls' Moat House on the sea bank;^[35] some scholars have drawn parallels between his poetry and the landscape he encountered on these visits.^[37][38]

The East Lincolnshire Railway, running along the coast between Boston and Grimsby, opened in 1848. In 1871, a branch line was built to Wainfleet All Saints with rolling stock operated by the Great Northern Railway; an extension to Skegness was approved by GNR shareholders that year^[39] and the railways arrived at Skegness in 1873.^[40] The line was designed to bring day trippers to the seaside.^[32][41] Rising wages and better holiday provision meant that some working-class people from the East Midlands factory towns like Nottingham, Derby and Leicester could afford to have a holiday for the first time.^[41][42] With agriculture in depression, the major landowner Richard Lumley, 9th Earl of Scarbrough had seen his income stagnate; his agent, H. V. Tippet, decided that the earl's fortunes might be revived if he turned Skegness into a seaside resort.^[43] A road plan was developed and the earl took out a mortgage of £120,000 to fund developments. In 1878, the full plan laid out plots for 787 houses in a grid-aligned settlement on 96 acres of land between the shoreline and Roman Bank north of the High Street.^[43][44] Scarbrough Avenue would run inland from the centre of the Parade and was bisected by Lumley Avenue, with a new church in the roundabout. At the end of Scarbrough Avenue would be a pier.^[45]

The earl spent thousands of pounds on laying roads and the sewerage system, and building the sea wall (the latter of which was finished in 1878).^[46][47] He provided other amenities, including Skegness Pier (opened in 1881), the pleasure gardens (finished in 1881), the steamboats (first launched in 1882 and taken over by the earl's company in 1883) and bathing pools (1883).^[48] He donated land and money towards the building of St Matthew's Church, two Methodist chapels, a school and the cricket ground.^[49][50] Housebuilding was left to speculative builders; the earliest development was concentrated in along Lumley Road, which offered a direct route from the train station to the seafront. Newspapers across the Midlands advertised properties, and shops began opening.^[51] By 1881 almost a thousand people had moved into the town.^[52][53] According to the local historian Winston Kime, Skegness had become known as a "trippers' paradise" by 1880.^[54] That August bank holiday saw 20,000 descend on the town; they came to enjoy the beach, the many games and amusements that had popped up in the town, the pleasure boat trips that had just started launching from the pier, and the donkey rides.^[55] Building contracted after the 1883 season,^[56] although the accreted sands in front of the sea wall south of the pier were converted into the Marine Gardens in 1888.^[56] This stagnation coincided with a declining number of day-trippers, which fell from a peak of 230,277 in 1882 to 118,473 in 1885.^[56] The undeveloped lands north of Scarbrough Avenue were turned into a park.^[56][57]

Fortunes changed during the 1890s;^[58] int the words of the historian Susan Barton, "Skegness and other 'lower' status resorts provided cheap amusements, beach entertainers, street traders and, by the end of the nineteenth century, spectacular entertainment for a mass market".^[59] Convalescent homes began opening in the town, the earliest being the Nottinghamshire Convalescent Home for Men (1891). Holiday homes or camps for the poor opened in 1891 and 1907.^[60][61] The town became an urban district in 1895.^[62] In 1908 the famous "Jolly Fisherman" poster was used by GNR to advertise day trips from King's Cross in London.^[63] By 1913 more than 750,000 people made excursions to the town.^[63] Aside from bathing and enjoying the sands, visitors to Skegness found entertainment in the pier, which had a concert hall, saloon and theatre. Other theatres and picture houses opened in the early 20th century.^[64][65] Britain's first switchback railway had opened in the town in 1885 or 1887.^{[n 5]} A fairground operated on the central beach before the First World War and the Figure 8 rollercoaster replaced the switchback in 1908.^[67][68] By 1911, the population had reached 3,775.^[69]

Aside from a seaplane base briefly established by the town in 1914, the First World War brought little change to the fabric of Skegness.^[70] Skegness's popularity as a tourist destination grew in the interwar years and boomed during the 1930s.^[67] The urban district council purchased the seafront in 1922 and its surveyor R. H. Jenkins oversaw the construction of Tower Esplanade (1923), the boating lake (1924, extended in 1932), the Fairy Dell paddling pool, the Embassy Ballroom and an outdoor pool in 1928, and remodelled the foreshore north of the pier in 1931. Billy Butlin (who had been a stall holder on the beach since 1925) built permanent amusements south of the pier in 1929.^[68][71] In 1932 the first illuminations were turned on and the following year Butlin launched a carnival. Cinemas and casinos joined the theatres of the Edwardian period as popular attractions. In 1936, Butlin built his own all-in holiday camp in Ingoldmells, providing constant entertainment and facilities for guests.^[67] It was joined in 1939 by The Derbyshire Miners' Holiday Camp.^[72] This coincided with growth in the residential area, mostly through speculative developments and some council house-building;^[47][73][74] North Parade was built up with hotels in the 1930s^[68] and the Seathorne Estate was also laid out in 1925.^[75] By 1931, the town's population had reached 9,122.^[76]

During the Second World War, the Royal Air Force billeted thousands of trainees in the town for its No 11 Recruit Centre. The Butlin's camp was occupied by the Royal Navy, who called it HMS Royal Arthur and used it for training seamen. Aerial bombing of the town began in 1940; there were fatalities on several occasions, the greatest being on 24 October 1941 when twelve residents were killed during a bombing raid.^[77]

Since the Second World War, self-catered holidays have become popular, prompting the growth of caravan parks and chalet accommodation.^[78] By 1981 20 caravan sites were in operation and five years later there were 12,000 holiday caravans and chalets in Skegness and Ingoldmells.^[78][79] Much of the lodging accommodation in the town centre closed as a result.^[78] The 1970s also witnessed the birth of the cheap package airline holiday abroad, which took visitors away from British seaside towns.^[80] The decline in coal mining in the East Midlands in the 1980s caused what the BBC described as a "damaging dip in trade".^[81] Nevertheless, holiday-makers continued to visit the town and in the 1980s and 1990s people ventured to Skegness for their second holiday alongside trips abroad;^[80] it also proved popular among the elderly in the winter months.^[81] The resort's popularity grew during the late 2000s Great Recession, as it offered a cheaper alternative to holidays abroad.^[82] Between 2006 and 2008, 870,000 people made overnight trips to Skegness; this figure had risen to 1,030,000 for 2010–12.^[83]

The fabric of the town centre has also changed. North and South Bracing were built in 1948–49. Butlin's left the main amusement park and it was extensively refurbished in 1966.^[79] Residential development has included council estates near St Clement's Church and Winthorpe,^[84] as well as private developments in various locations around the town.^[85][86] The seafront was fully developed in the 1970s and the last of The Park built on in 1982.^[87] In 1971, the pier entrance was remodelled;^[64] seven years later, a large section was swept away in a storm.^[88] The Embassy Ballroom and the swimming baths were replaced with the Embassy Centre in 1999.^[68] By 2001, European Union grants had provided millions of pounds towards regeneration schemes.^[81] Since the war, most of the seafront's hotels, cinemas and theatres have been turned into amusement arcades, nightclubs, shops and bingo halls.^[89] What remained of Frederica Terrace, one of Skegness's oldest buildings, had been converted into entertainment bars and arcades before it was destroyed in a fire in 2007.^[90][91]

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