Skegness, Lincolnshire, England, United Kingdom

🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 Skegness is a seaside town and civil parish in the East Lindsey District of Lincolnshire, England. On the Lincolnshire coast of the North Sea, the town is 43 miles (69 km) east of Lincoln and 22 miles (35 km) north-east of Boston. It is the largest settlement in East Lindsey. It also incorporates Winthorpe and Seacroft, and forms a larger built-up area with the resorts of Ingoldmells and Chapel St Leonards to the north. The town is on the A52 and A158 roads, connecting it with Boston and the East Midlands, and Lincoln respectively. Skegness railway station is on the Nottingham to Skegness (via Grantham) line.

The original Skegness was situated farther east at the mouth of The Wash. Its Norse name refers to a headland which sat near the settlement. By the 14th century, it was a locally important port for coastal trade. The natural sea defences which protected the harbour eroded in the later Middle Ages, and it was lost to the sea after a storm in the 1520s. Rebuilt along the new shoreline, early modern Skegness was a small fishing and farming village, but from the late 18th century members of the local gentry visited for holidays. The arrival of the railways in 1873 transformed it into a popular seaside resort. This was the intention of The 9th Earl of Scarbrough, who owned most of the land in the vicinity; he built the infrastructure of the town and laid out plots, which he leased to speculative developers. This new Skegness quickly became a popular destination for holiday-makers and day trippers from the East Midlands factory towns. By the interwar years the town was established as one of the most popular seaside resorts in Britain. The layout of the modern seafront dates to this time and holiday camps were built around the town, including the first Butlin's holiday resort which opened in Ingoldmells in 1936.

The package holiday abroad became an increasingly popular and affordable option for many British holiday-makers during the 1970s; this trend combined with declining industrial employment in the East Midlands to harm Skegness's visitor economy in the late 20th century. Nevertheless, the resort retains a loyal visitor base and has increasingly attracted people visiting for a short holiday alongside their trip abroad. Tourism increased following the recession of 2007–09 owing to the resort's affordability. In 2011, the town was England's fourth most popular holiday destination for UK residents, and in 2015 it received over 1.4 million visitors. It has a reputation as a traditional English seaside resort owing to its long, sandy beach and seafront attractions which include amusement arcades, eateries, Botton's fairground, the pier, nightclubs and bars. Other visitor attractions include Natureland Seal Sanctuary, a museum, an aquarium, a heritage railway, an annual carnival, a yearly arts festival, and Gibraltar Point nature reserve to the south of the town.

Despite the arrival of several manufacturing firms since the 1950s and Skegness's prominence as a local commercial centre, the tourism industry remains very important for the economy and employment. But the tourism service economy's low wages and seasonal nature, along with the town's aging population, have contributed towards high levels of relative deprivation among the resident population. Poor transport and communication links are barriers to economic diversification. Residents are served by five state primary schools and a preparatory school, two state secondary schools (one of which is selective), several colleges, a community hospital, several churches and two local newspapers. The town is home to a police station, a magistrates' court and a lifeboat station.

Geography The civil parish of Skegness includes most of the linear settlement of Seacroft to the south and the village of Winthorpe and the suburban area of Seathorne to the north, all of which have been absorbed into the town's urban area. The neighbouring parishes are: Ingoldmells to the north, Addlethorpe to the north-west, Burgh le Marsh to the west and Croft to the south. The town is approximately 22 miles (35 km) north-east of Boston and 43 miles (69 km) east of Lincoln.

Skegness fronts the North Sea. It is located on a low-lying flat region called Lincoln Marsh, which runs along the coast between Skegness and the Humber and separates the coast from the upland Wolds. Much of the parish's elevation is close to sea level, although a narrow band along the seafront is 4–5 m (13–16 ft) above peaking at 6 m (20 ft) on North Parade; the A52 road is elevated at 4 m (13 ft); and there is also a short narrow bank parallel to the shoreline between the North Shore Golf Club and Seathorne which is 10 m (33 ft) above sea level.

The bedrock under the town is part of the Ferriby Chalk Formation, a sedimentary layer formed around 100 million years ago during the Cretaceous period; it runs north-west from Skegness in a narrow band to Fotherby and Utterby north of Louth in the Wolds. The surface layers are tidal-flat deposits of clay and silt, deposited since the end of the last ice age and during the Holocene epoch (the last 11,800 years). The shoreline consists of blown sand and beach deposits in the form of clay, silt and sand.

Coastal erosion There has been coastal erosion in the area for thousands of years, though it was relatively sheltered until the Middle Ages by a series of offshore barrier islands or shoals made up of boulder clay. Rising sea levels and more intense sea storms from the 13th century onward very likely eroded these islands, increasingly exposing the Skegness coast to the tides. Records from the Middle Ages show that local people maintained sand banks as a form of sea defence; fines were levied for grazing animals on the dunes, which could weaken the defences. Skegness was flooded in 1525 or 1526, requiring the village to be rebuilt inland, and loss of land continued during the century. A clay embankment, Roman Bank, was built in the late 16th century and was followed in c. 1670 by another closer to the sea (Green Bank), running from what is now North Shore Road to Cow Bank, following a line from St Andrew's Drive to Drummond Road. By the late 19th century, sands were accreting at Skegness; the retaining sea wall erected in 1878 was designed to support the resort town's seafront development rather than to protect it from the sea. Nevertheless, this wall largely saved the town during the 1953 flood, when only gardens, the amusements and part of the pier were damaged.

In the early 21st century, Longshore drift carries particles of sediment southwards along the Lincolnshire coast. At Skegness, the sand settles out in banks which run at a slight south-west angle to the coast. Sand continues to accrete at the southern end of the town's shore, but coastal erosion continues immediately north of the settlement. Modern sea defences have been built along a 15-mile (24 km) stretch of coast between Mablethorpe (to the north) and Skegness to prevent erosion, but currents remove sediment and the defences hinder dune development; a nourishment scheme began operation in 1994 to replace lost sand.

History There is evidence of late Iron-Age and early Roman saltmaking activity in the Skegness area. Place names and a report of a castle in the medieval settlement have been interpreted as evidence that a Roman fort existed in the town before being lost to the sea in the late Middle Ages. 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. If the Roman fortifications indeed existed, it is likely that the Anglo-Saxons used them as a coastal shore fort. Later, the Vikings settled in Lincolnshire and their influence is detected in many local place names. Skegness's name combines the Old Norse words Skeggi and ness, and means either "Skeggi's headland" or "beard-shaped headland"; 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. Skegness was not named in the Domesday Book of 1086. It is usually identified with the Domesday settlement called Tric.[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.[n 2] The name Skegness appears in the 12th century, and further references are known from the 13th.

Natural sea defences (including a promontory or cape, as the place name suggests, and barrier shoals and dunes) protected a harbour at Skegness in the Middle Ages. 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. It was also an important fishing port. During the medieval period the offshore barrier islands which sheltered the coast were destroyed, very likely in the 13th century during a period of exceptionally stormy weather. This left the coast exposed to the sea and in a constant state of change; later in the Middle Ages, frequent storms and floods eroded sea defences. 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. Rising sea levels further threatened the coast and in 1525 or 1526 Skegness was largely washed away in a storm, along with the hamlets of East and West Meales.[n 3]

Later fishing and farming village After the flooding, Skegness was rebuilt along the new coastline. By 1543, when the antiquarian John Leland visited the town, he noted that "For old Skegnes is now buildid a pore new thing"; the settlement was principally a small farming and fishing village throughout the early modern period, with the marshland providing good summer pasture for sheep. Over the course of the 16th century, the sea continued to encroach into the land at Skegness, while depositing sand banks further south, leading to the creation of Gibraltar Point. Roman Bank, a clay sea defence upon which the A52 road now runs through Skegness, was built in the latter part of the century. Much of the land in and around Skegness came into the hands of Nicholas Saunderson, 1st Viscount Castleton, who enclosed 400 acres (160 hectares) of saltmarsh in 1627 and later in the 17th century reclaimed more marshland which had emerged from the sea, sheltered behind the growing Gibraltar Point. His descendant was responsible for erecting Green Bank between Roman Bank and the shore in c. 1670, allowing more lands to be converted to agricultural use. The Lords Castleton had enclosed a large portion of the land around Skegness by 1740, over 800 acres (320 hectares). 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 1739 Lumley became 3rd Earl of Scarbrough. By 1845, the Scarbrough estate comprised 1,219 acres (493 hectares) at Skegness.[n 4] Although the population rose above 300 by 1851, the settlement "was still very much an undeveloped village of fishermen, farmers and farm hands" in the early 1870s.

Early resort Local gentry began visiting the village for leisure reasons from the late 18th century.[n 5] The sea air was thought to have health-giving qualities. 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. The first reference to bathing machines on Skegness's shores dates to 1784 though they are thought to have been present earlier. Private houses also opened their doors to lodgers, and other hotels opened. 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; some scholars have drawn parallels between his poetry and the landscape he encountered on these visits.

The railways and the modern resort 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 and the railways arrived at Skegness in 1873. The line was designed to bring day trippers to the seaside. 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. With agriculture in depression, the major landowner Richard Lumley, 9th Earl of Scarbrough had seen his local rental income decline; his agent, H. V. Tippet, decided that the earl's fortunes might be revived if he turned Skegness into a seaside resort.[n 6] 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 (39 hectares) of land between the shoreline and Roman Bank north of the High Street. 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.

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). He provided or invested in other amenities, including the gas and water supply, Skegness Pier (opened in 1881), the pleasure gardens (finished in 1881), the steamboats (launched by 1883) and bathing pools (1883). He donated land and money towards the building of St Matthew's Church, two Methodist chapels, a school and the cricket ground. Housebuilding was left to speculative builders; the earliest development was concentrated 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. By 1881 almost a thousand people had moved into the town. According to the local historian Winston Kime, Skegness had become known as a "trippers' paradise" by 1880. The August bank holiday in 1882 saw 20,000 descend on the town; they came to enjoy the beach and the sea, 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. Building contracted after the 1883 season, although in 1888 the accreted sands in front of the sea wall south of the pier were converted into the Marine Gardens, a lawn with trees and hedges. The undeveloped lands north of Scarbrough Avenue were fenced in and planted with trees in a space called The Park. 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. The local historian Richard Gurnham could not find a clear explanation for this decline in contemporary reports, though one newspaper article from 1884 blamed "the depression of trade" in Nottingham for a fall in visitor numbers compared with the previous year.

1890s to 1945: ** boom years** Fortunes changed during the 1890s; in 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". 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. The town became an urban district in 1895. In 1908 the famous "Jolly Fisherman" poster was used by GNR to advertise day trips from King's Cross in London. By 1913 more than 750,000 people made excursions to the town. 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. Britain's first switchback railway had opened in the town in 1885 or 1887.[n 7] A fairground operated on the central beach before the First World War and the Figure 8 roller coaster replaced the switchback in 1908. By 1911, the population had reached 3,775.

Seventy-one local servicemen who died in the First World War are commemorated on the town's war memorial. Aside from a seaplane base briefly established by the town in 1914, the conflict brought little change to the fabric of Skegness. Its popularity as a tourist destination grew in the interwar years and boomed during the 1930s. 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, and 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. 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, while some of the apartments and houses by the seafront were converted into shops, cafés and arcades. In 1936, Butlin built his own all-in holiday camp in Ingoldmells, providing constant entertainment and facilities for guests. It was joined in 1939 by The Derbyshire Miners' Holiday Camp. This coincided with growth in the residential area, mostly speculative developments and some council housing;[n 8] North Parade was built up with hotels in the 1930s and the Seathorne Estate was also laid out in 1925. By 1931, the town's population had reached 9,122.

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. Fifty-seven local servicemen died in the conflict and are named on the town's war memorial.

Since the Second World War Since the Second World War, self-catered holidays have become popular, prompting the growth of caravan parks and chalet accommodation. By 1981, 20 caravan sites were in operation and five years later there were over 100,000 holiday caravans and chalets in Skegness and Ingoldmells. Increasingly the lodging accommodation in the town centre closed as a result, or was converted into flats or shops. The 1970s also witnessed the advent of the cheap package airline holiday abroad, which took visitors away from British seaside towns. The decline in coal mining in the East Midlands in the 1980s caused what the BBC described as a "damaging dip in trade". 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; it also proved popular among the elderly in the winter months. The resort's popularity grew during the late 2000s Great Recession, as it offered a cheaper alternative to holidays abroad. Between 2006 and 2008, 870,000 people made overnight trips to Skegness; this figure had risen to 1,030,000 for 2010–12.

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 by Botton Bros in 1966; the switchback on North Parade was demolished in 1970. Residential development has included council estates near St Clement's Church and Winthorpe, as well as private developments in various locations around the town. The seafront was fully developed in the 1970s and the last of The Park built on in 1982. In 1971, the pier entrance was remodelled; seven years later, a large section was swept away in a storm. The Embassy Ballroom and the swimming baths were replaced in 1999 with the Embassy Theatre Complex, which includes a theatre, indoor swimming pool, leisure centre and car park. By 2001, European Union grants had provided millions of pounds towards regeneration schemes. Since the war, most of the seafront's hotels, cinemas and theatres have been turned into amusement arcades, nightclubs, shops and bingo halls. 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.

Economy According to VisitEngland, in 2011 Skegness was the fourth most popular holiday destination in England among UK residents. In 2015, Skegness and Ingoldmells received 1,484,000 visitors, of which 649,000 were day visitors; this brought in £212.83 million in direct expenditure, with an estimated economic impact of £289.60 million. The town council has described local employment as "heavily reliant" on tourism. One estimate suggested that in 2015 2,846 jobs were supported directly by the visitor economy (accounting for around a third of the town's employed residents), with tourism indirectly supporting nearly 900 more. Over half of these jobs were in accommodation and food and drink, with a further 18.1% in retail. Skegness's visitor economy has been described by the district council as "counter-cyclical"; while continuing to serve a loyal client base, it provides a cheap alternative to holidays abroad and has therefore proven popular when the economy has been slower for the rest of the region. The seafront is a hub for the tourism industry, much of which is geared towards the provision of food (most famously fish and chips), amusement arcades and other attractions, including the Botton's Pleasure Beach funfair with various rides. The pubs, bars and nightclubs, and neon-lit amusements have earned it the popular nickname "Skegvegas" (after Las Vegas).

Before the 1950s, the only major manufacturing interest in Skegness was Alfred Hayward's rock factory which had opened in the 1920s. After the Second World War, some other light industry arrived, including Murphy Radio and the nylon makers Stiebels; in 1954 the bearings and packaging systems manufacturer Rose Brothers (Gainsborough) Ltd opened a factory in the town, on Church Road in a former laundry. The urban district council opened an industrial estate off Wainfleet Road in 1956 which Murphy and Stiebels moved to. Murphy's successor left the town in the 1970s, but Stiebels and the ride manufacturer R. G. Mitchell were still operating on the estate in the late 1980s, while Rose-Forgrove (which had opened a larger factory in 1977) and Sanderson Forklifts had factories elsewhere in the town. The latter went into administration in 1990, and the Rose Bearings factory was sold to NMB-Minebea in 1992; they closed it in 2010. The ride manufacturer R. G. Mitchell was purchased in 2005 by Photo-Me International; operation resumed under the name Jolly Roger Amusement Rides, which continues to operate on the industrial estate as of 2020. In 2020 there were three other manufacturers operating on the industrial estate: Unique Car Mats (UK) Ltd (founded in 1989), Windale Furnishings Ltd (a caravan seating maker founded in 1993), and Parragon Rubber Company. A range of services have outlets on the estate, including a medical practice, two skilled trades, a solicitor, five vehicle repair garages, three other repair services and a mobile disco service. There is also a recycling centre and driving test centre; 16 shops ranging from a cheese-monger to tyre dealers; 12 wholesalers operating in electrics, building materials, plumbing and hardware supply, and 11 other wholesalers in fields including clothing, restaurant equipment, meat and plastic sheeting. The district council have proposed extending the estate as of 2016. The council also opened the Aura Skegness Business Centre there in 2004.

Along with Louth, Skegness is "one of the main shopping and commercial centres" in East Lindsey, most likely due to it being the closest service hub for a large part of the surrounding rural area. Management Horizon Europe's 2008 UK shopping index measured the presence of national suppliers; Skegness was the highest ranked shopping destination in the district. It also ranked highest in the 2013–14 Venuescore survey. The High Street and Lumley Road are key retail areas, along with the Hildreds Centre (a small shopping mall which opened in 1988), Skegness Retail Park (developed between 2000 and 2005), and the Quora Retail Park on Burgh Road which opened in 2017 and includes several supermarkets; other supermarkets operate elsewhere.[n 9] Occupancy rates are relatively high: in 2015, 4% of ground-floor retail units were vacant, which is less than half the national average and down from 9% in 2009. Nevertheless, Skegness is relatively weak at offering higher value comparison goods, with Lincoln and Grimsby being key destinations for high-value shopping.

Healthcare Skegness and District General Hospital opened in 1913 as a cottage hospital; it underwent major redevelopment works in 1939, was taken over by the National Health Service nine years later and extended in 1985. As of June 2020, it is a community hospital run by the Lincolnshire Community Health Services NHS Trust; some of its services are provided by the United Lincolnshire Hospitals NHS Trust (ULH). It contains two in-patient wards, with 39 beds (including three in palliative care) and its services include a 24-hour, walk-in Urgent Care Centre. ULH runs Accident and Emergency departments at Lincoln County Hospital and Pilgrim Hospital in Boston. As of 2020, the town has two GP practices (on Hawthorn Road and Churchill Avenue), four dental practices (three on Algitha Road and one on Ida Road), and three opticians. There are community mental health services provided at Holly Lodge. There is a health centre on Cecil Avenue and the hospital includes a contraception and general health advice centre.

Visitor attractions The Rough Guides describe Skegness as "every inch the traditional English seaside town". Its long, wide, sandy beach is a main attraction for visitors; described as "sparklingly clean" by Rough Guides, in 2019 it was re-awarded the Foundation for Environmental Education's Blue Flag award which recognises the beach's high-quality water, facilities, beach safety, management and environmental education facilities. Between 1 May and 30 September, dogs are banned from the beach. Donkey rides are offered for children there.

The seafront includes Skegness Pier, which houses amusements; to the south, Botton's Pleasure Beach is a funfair with roller coasters and other rides. Further south still is the Jubilee Clock Tower and the boating lake and Fairy Dell paddling pool. The western side of Grand Parade houses amusements and eateries, punctuated by the entrance to Tower Gardens, a park; its pavilion, which dated to 1879, was demolished in 2019–20 and a community centre and café built on its site. Opposite the gardens is the Embassy Theatre. The town's nightlife includes bars, pubs and nightclubs.

Natureland Seal Sanctuary, on North Parade, rescues and houses distressed seals; it also features penguins, aquariums, and other animals. The town has an aquarium (Skegness Aquarium), which opened on Tower Esplanade in 2015. Further into the town, The Village Church Farm (formerly Church Farm Museum) contains exhibitions about historical farming life. A volunteer-run heritage railway, the Lincolnshire Coast Light Railway, moved to Skegness in 1990 and opened to fare-paying members of the public in 2009; it operates along a 1.5-mile (2.4 km) length of track.

To the south of Skegness is Gibraltar Point, a national nature reserve, consisting of unspoilt marshland. It was among England's earliest bird observatories when it was established in 1949 and, as of 2020, is open to the public. Alongside walkways and paths, it has a visitor centre, café and toilet facilities.

Arts and music Skegness Carnival normally operates as an annual event (in August) as of 2020; the town hosted its first carnival in 1898, but the modern event dates to 1933. Since 2009, Skegness has held a music, art and cultural event, the SO Festival; in 2013 the district council estimated that it generated £1m for the area. In 1928, as part of the local authority's foreshore development, the Embassy Ballroom was built on Grand Parade. It was remodelled in 1982 and completely rebuilt in 1999 as the Embassy Theatre Complex, which is Skegness's only theatre as of 2020.[n 18] The town has two cinemas: the Tower Cinema (opened in 1922) and an ABC Cinema (opened in 1936), as of 2020.[n 19]

The Skegness Boys' Brigade Band started in 1908; it was disbanded on the outbreak of the First World War. A new band was formed in 1923 or 1928, as Skegness Town Band, which later changed its name to Skegness Silver Band. The band continues to operate as of 2020. The Skegness Excelsior Band also operated in the interwar period. The town's amateur dramatic society, the Skegness Playgoers, was founded in 1937. As of 2020, they aim to put on two productions a year at the Embassy Theatre.

Sport Skegness is home to Skegness Town A.F.C., which plays at the Vertigo Stadium on Wainfleet Road; known as The Lilywhites, the club was founded in 1947 and has been in the Northern Counties East Football League since 2018. Another team, Skegness United F.C., folded in 2018. The town has a rugby club, Skegness R.U.F.C., which plays in the Midlands 4 East (North) division of the Nottinghamshire, Lincolnshire and Derbyshire Rugby Football Union, and has a clubhouse on Wainfleet Road. Skegness Cricket Club traces its origins to at least 1877 and has its ground on Richmond Drive. There is also the Skegness Yacht Club, Indoor Bowls Club and Skegness Town Bowls Club. Skegness Stadium, just outside the town, hosts stock car racing.

Seacroft golf course is a traditional links course at the southern end of Skegness. It is a private members club but is open to the public upon request. Much of the course is part of a SSSI. The course has been used for various amateur championship events. It was designed by Willie Fernie and the course opened in 1900. It replaced an earlier course built in 1895.

Media In 1922, the proprietors of the Lincolnshire Standard group of newspapers established a local version for the town, the Skegness Standard; it switched to tabloid in 1981; the Standard continues as a weekly as of 2020. Founded in 2001, the East Lindsey Target became the East Coast and The Wolds Target in 2017, and continues as of 2020. Former newspapers include the Skegness Herald (1882–1917) and the Skegness News (1909–1964; revived in 1985 but merged into the Skegness Standard in 2007).

Skegness is covered by BBC Yorkshire and Lincolnshire/ITV Yorkshire. The public broadcaster BBC Radio Lincolnshire operates across the county, as do the commercial radio stations Lincs FM and Greatest Hits Radio Lincolnshire. Coastal Sound radio (founded in 2016) is a community radio service broadcasting from Skegness to the area and beyond by way of the internet.

Historic buildings Skegness's oldest buildings are the medieval churches of St Clement, in Skegness, and St Mary, in Winthorpe. St Clement's has a 13th-century tower; the rest of the building may be medieval, but probably dates to the mid-16th century when it is thought to have been rebuilt. There were restorations in 1884 and the 20th-century and it is grade-II* listed. St Mary's is grade-I listed and is mostly 15th-century, with some late 12th-century elements. There are some 16th-century monumental brasses, and a medieval standing cross in the churchyard, which is a scheduled monument. Other buildings which predate the modern resort town include the Ivy House Farmhouse on Burgh Road, which dates to the mid or late 18th century, Church Farmhouse on Church Road, which dates to the early 18th century and hosts the Church Farm Museum, the 18th-century Church Farmhouse on Church End, Winthorpe, and the early-19th-century Burnside Farmhouse. The houses at 1–5 St Andrew's Drive are mid- to late-19th-century cottages and thought to have been built to house coastguards.

Parts of the Victorian development have been recognised for their special interest. These include the Church of St Matthew and the war memorial in its churchyard, the Jubilee Clock Tower (built in 1898 and a landmark in the town), and portions of original railings dating from the 1870s which are situated to the south and north of the clock tower; these are all grade-II listed structures. A large portion of the later esplanade, boating lake, land north of the pier and tower gardens is also grade-II listed. South Parade and Grand Parade contain 19th- and 20th-century boarding houses in the Queen Anne revival style. Modern buildings of note include the Sun Castle (1932), County Hotel (1935) and The Ship Hotel (c. 1935).

Transport: Road The A52 road from Newcastle-under-Lyme to Mablethorpe passes through Skegness via Nottingham, Grantham and Boston. The A158 from Lincoln terminates in the town. The A1028 connects Skegness with the A16, which runs from Grimsby to Peterborough via Louth.

Transport: Bus Omnibus services reached the village from Boston before the development of the resort; by the 1840s, Brown's omnibus made the journey from Boston three days a week. As of 2020, Stagecoach Lincolnshire is the main bus operator in the town with regular services on routes to Ingoldmells and Chapel St Leonards; there are Lincolnshire InterConnect services up the coast as far as Mablethorpe and inland to Boston and Lincoln.

Transport: Rail Skegness railway station is the terminus for the Grantham to Skegness ("Poacher") line which runs hourly services from Nottingham via Grantham. Opened in 1873, it was the final station on the Firsby–Skegness branch of the East Lincolnshire Railway. The number of people travelling by car and coach probably overtook the number using the train in the 1930s, a trend solidified in the post-war years. The station was earmarked for closure in the Beeching cuts in the 1960s, but a third of the summer visitors still used it and lobbying by the urban district council preserved passenger services. The line was nevertheless closed to freight traffic in 1966 and the main interconnecting line, the East Lincolnshire Railway, was dismantled from Firsby to Grimsby in 1970. The passenger timetable was reduced to save costs in 1977, but a full timetable returned in 1989 and improvement works were carried out in 2001 and 2011; the latter seeing the old station master's house demolished. As of 2020, trains run the full length of the Poacher Line and the Nottingham to Grantham Line to give connections to the East Midlands; Nottingham, Grantham, Boston and Sleaford have direct connections, while Leicester, Derby and Kettering require a change at Nottingham.

Transport: Air Skegness Water Leisure Park, north of the town, has its own light aircraft airfield named Skegness Airfield (ICAO: EGNI), operated by Skegness Aerofield Club. It is equipped with two runways, and PPR (Prior Permission Required) is required for landing. The main international airport serving Skegness is East Midlands Airport at Castle Donington, 14 miles (23 km) south of Nottingham and approximately 90 miles (140 km) from Skegness. Humberside Airport, near Immingham in North Lincolnshire, is approximately 48 miles (77 km) away, but operates a much smaller range of passenger services.