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Bringing
you the news year after year
The Skegness Standard
was first published on Wednesday, July 5, 1922, from a premises in Lumley
Road.
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A
brief history of tourism
The
Skegness area has been occupied since Roman times.
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Find
out about the Fisherman
The Jolly Fisherman,
with his sou'wester, gum boots and broad smile, has become synonymous
with Skegness.
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Paddle
boats and a pier to be proud of
Skegness’ most famous
feature is undoubtedly its pier, which is one of only 50 remaining in
the UK.
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Billy
Butlin - funfairs and fame
William Heygate Colbourne
Butlin was born in Cape Town, South Africa on 29th September 1899 to William,
the son of a clergyman, and Bertha, the daughter of a small town baker
who had become a travelling showman.
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Carry
on camping
Billy Butlin, a travelling
fairground worker from Canada, set up his first holiday camp at Skegness
in 1936 having identified a need for all-weather recreation for holiday-makers.
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80
years of Skegness yesterdays
After the foreshore became the property of Skegness Urban District Council
in 1922, the local authority quickly went ahead with developing it.
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Flying
bombs and wartime rations
By 1939 the nation seemed to have almost recovered from the
Wall Street disaster of 10 years earlier, and then Hitler marched into
Poland and Europe was aflame again.
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The
ups and downs of life in a grand old English seaside town
As at the end of the Great War 1914-18, the aftermath of the
Second World War found Britain with a huge housing shortage and local
authorities’ first priority was solving that crisis.
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Vickers
Point, Ingoldmells, around 1950. Three years later, the sea broke through
and swept over this cafe and camp ground.
By
1939 the nation seemed to have almost recovered from the Wall Street disaster
of 10 years earlier, and then Hitler marched into Poland and Europe was
aflame again.
The writing had been on the wall and, after the Munich crisis of 1938,
emergency services began training in towns and cities all over the country.
Air Raid Precautions - ARP, later renamed Civil Defence - were set up
with sections for fire-fighting, ambulances, rescue and building first
aid, poison gas decontamination, air raid wardens and firewatchers, as
well as the LDV - Local Defence Volunteers, later the Home Guard - Red
Cross nurses, WVS and the Royal Observer Corps for spotting enemy planes.
In Skegness the different units were dispersed about the town with the
section heads at a control room at Pembroke House in Rutland Road, now
the Masonic Hall. The ARP controller was C J Goulson, who had been the
council’s bathing pool superintendent and was later foreshore director.
In addition to the Royal Navy’s “training ship” at Butlin’s Camp, No 11
RAF Recruit Centre had several thousand personnel billeted in the town,
while the Army manned coastal batteries and searchlight units.
In the Lumley Avenue area a number of brick and concrete communal air-raid
shelters were built on the grass verges for the public to take shelter
during bombing raids. Their concrete floors were still there until a year
or so ago when the paving was reconstructed.
Concrete tank traps were constructed on Tower Esplanade and other entrances
to the seashore where selected areas were mined and placed out of bounds.
There were many bombing raids over the town during those frightening years,
usually hit-and-run daylight raiders or single night prowlers, often in
and out before the siren could be sounded.
According to the official report, there were 39 bombing incidents and
the air raid alert sounded 387 times. There were 36 fatal casualties and
181 people were injured.
There were additional deaths among RAF and Naval personnel, both at HMS
Royal Arthur and in Skegness.
The first bombs on the town were incendiaries, dropped on Seacroft Golf
Links on July 23, 1940, and the last raid occurred on October 24, 1942,
possibly the worst of the war.
High explosives and incendiaries fell at the Scarbrough Avenue-Park Avenue
junction where 12 people died and 66 were injured.
Ten houses were demolished and over 300 damaged, while another one set
on fire had to be pulled down.
The first flying bomb to reach Lincolnshire was on September 19, 1944,
crossing the coast at Skegness at 04-13 hours and exploding in a potato
field on Methringham Fen, nearly 30 miles inland. It made a crater 25
feet wide and six feet deep and several bags of tates were lost.
Nobody was hurt as the field happened to be deserted at that time in the
morning.
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