Skegness Magazine

Nuttall’s Beach Donkeys

Back in the summer of 2008, the London film production company,  CineFlix.com, contacted Skegness Video after seeing an article about Skegness donkeys on our website. The production company wanted to include a clip about a day in the life of a Skegness donkey in an international  “Animals at Work”  film they were making. We put the company in touch with John Nuttall whose family has worked beach donkeys for over a hundred years in Cleethorpes and Skegness.

Arrangements were made and the film crew turned up at Nutshell Farm in July, 2008 to begin filming.

The film follows Sam the new donkey as he was examined at Nutshell Farm and passed fit to work as a beach donkey by Shelagh Steel of the donkey sanctuary, and afterwards on his first day on Skegness beach.

The film is very professionally made, pacey, with some excellently composed shots. One of my favourites shots is when the narrator says John and the donkey “were all ears” when Mrs Steel was delivering the results – and below is the accompanying visual shot with John’s and the donkey’s ears in the foreground and Mrs Steel face-on.

Captured frame above shows Talia Nuttall with Sam the Donkey.

John very kindly gave us a copy of the video made by CineFlix.com, for our website. You can view it by entering the password ’skegness’.