Skegness Magazine

HIS Promenade, HIS Gardens, HIS Cutting, and HIS Oyster-shell!

The residents of Skegness, that bracing watering-place on the Lincolnshire coast, seemed to exist chiefly by permission of the Earl of Scarbrough!

A Londoner visited Skegness in 1910 and stayed in Algitha Road.
The first thing he saw as he looked out of the window at breakfast time was a notice board with the message:-

“Algitha Road – This road is the private property of

THE EARL OF SCARBROUGH, and it is used by the Public on sufferance only.”

The visitor’s spirits sank when he read that. He felt like an intruder, not welcomed but barely tolerated by a noble lord, and a sense of social insignificance overwhelmed him.

He went down to the Promenade after breakfast, and caught sight of another notice board:-

“This Promenade is the private property of

THE EARL OF SCARBROUGH, and it is used by the Public on sufferance only.”

Anxious to escape from the all-pervading presence of the Earl of Scarbrough, the Londoner walked towards the Gardens. In order to reach them he had to pass through a narrow cutting, and there was another board with this chilling reminder:-

“The Public are allowed to pass through this cutting on sufferance only.

It is THE PRIVATE PROPERTY OF THE EARL OF SCARBROUGH”

The hunted man dashed into the Gardens to escape the earl, and found another notice board announcing that he owned the Gardens also!

He decided to go for a walk four miles along the beach, and there, too, at Scarbrough Point, the earl was before him.
There was a notice that he was there on sufferance, with a further cordial intimation that dogs would be trapped.

In fact, to escape the Earl of Scarbrough at Skegness was impossible!

And it appears that our Londoner friend wasn’t the only one to have been haunted by the Earl of Scarbrough during a visit to Skegness…

Several years previously, a Nottingham man, on returning home from his holiday in Skegness, discovered that his little child had brought back an oyster-shell.
The father wrote to the Earl of Scarbrough, returning the oyster-shell, admitting that it was the earl’s property, but expressing a respectful hope that in view of the tender age of the criminal the earl would not prosecute.

It was deemed creditable to the high traditions which have always animated the British landowners that the Earl of Scarbrough, on this occasion, didn’t prosecute.

Picture: an oyster-shell, with kind permission of the Earl of Scarbrough.