A report from October 2004 suggests that Shingle Street is at risk from coastal erosion and flooding and could disappear within 20 years if sea defences are not erected.

After World War II many strange happenings were reported to have taken place at Shingle Street, including a failed German invasion.

[6][7][8] Since the civilian population had been evacuated in May 1940, there were no eyewitness reports, although official documents remained classified until questions in the House of Commons led to their early release in 1993.

Author James Hayward has proposed that these rumours, which were widely reported in the American press, were a successful example of black propaganda with an aim of ensuring American co-operation and securing lend lease resources by showing that the United Kingdom was capable of successfully resisting the German Army.

In 2005 stonecutter Lida Cardozo Kindersley and her childhood friend Els Bottema started to arrange a line of shells on the beach, beginning as a way of coping with their shared experience of cancer treatment.