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 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.

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.

[6] The bedrock under the town is part of the Ferriby Chalk Formation, a sedimentary layer formed around 100 million years ago during the Cretaceous; it runs north-west from Skegness in a narrow band to Fotherby and Utterby north of Louth in the Wolds.

[7][8] There has been coastal erosion in the area for thousands of years,[9] though it was relatively sheltered until the Middle Ages by a series of offshore barrier islands or shoals of boulder clay.

[16] Lincolnshire's position on the east of the British Isles allows for a sunnier and warmer climate relative to the national average, and it is one of the driest counties in the UK.

[19] 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.

[34] 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.

[45] By 1543, when the antiquarian John Leland visited the town, he noted that "For old Skegnes is now buildid a pore new thing";[42] the settlement was principally a small farming and fishing village throughout the early modern period,[46] with the marshland providing good summer pasture for sheep.

[49][50][51] Much of the land in and around Skegness came into the hands of Nicholas Saunderson, 1st Viscount Castleton,[52] 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.

[64][65] Born and raised at Somersby, the poet Alfred Tennyson holidayed at Skegness as a young man;[66] some scholars have drawn parallels between his poetry and the landscape he encountered on these visits.

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.

[78][79] 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).

[82][83] 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.

[86] Building contracted after the 1883 season,[87] although in 1888 the accreted sands in front of the sea wall south of the pier were converted into the Marine Gardens,[88] a lawn with trees and hedges.

[88] 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.

[119] 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;[118] it also proved popular among the elderly in the winter months.

[120] 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.

After the Second World War, some other light industry arrived, including Murphy Radio and the nylon makers Stiebels;[122] in 1954 the bearings and packaging systems manufacturer Rose Brothers (Gainsborough) Ltd opened a factory on Church Road in a former laundry.

[144] 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.

[173] In 2019, the town council listed several key challenges: the low-paid, low-skilled and seasonal nature of work in the tourism industry; a consequential dependency on benefits and a reduced tax base; the under-funding of public services; poor infrastructure; a lack of training for and consequent out-migration of talented young people; and difficulty attracting skilled workers.

In the 1950s, the council acquired for £50,000 the former convalescent home run by the National Deposit Friendly Society on North Parade (this had been built in 1927); this was converted into offices, which were opened in 1964.

[197] The incumbent MP is Richard Tice of Reform UK, who has held the constituency since winning it from Matt Warman of the Conservative Party in the 2024 general election.

[293] The western side of Grand Parade houses amusements and eateries,[288][133] 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.

Billy Butlin first set up his amusements stall on the seafront in the 1920s, opened the fairground rides south of the pier in 1929 and then established the first of his all-in holiday camps at Ingoldmells in 1936.

[352] The disgraced clergyman Harold Davidson performed in a circus act in the amusement park in 1937 (while campaigning for his reinstatement to the priesthood), but died that year in the town after being mauled by one of his lions.

[358] Local sportspeople include Anne Pashley (died 2016), the Olympic athlete and (latterly) opera singer, who was born at Wallace's holiday camp in Skegness in 1935.

[364] Others with links to Skegness include the poet and art critic William Cosmo Monkhouse, who died in the town in 1901,[365] and the novelist Vernon Scannell, who was born there in 1922.

[368] The naval officer Sir Guy Grantham was born in the town in 1900,[369] as was the seaman Jesse Handsley, who served on Scott's first Antarctic Expedition;[370] The chess champion and educator John Littlewood taught at the grammar school.