🇬🇧 by John Byford (UK) ~ 2027
location: Germany
location: Germany
Little Boxes / Skegness - © John Byford
Static: Where Love & Hate Collide
Stretching along the East Lincolnshire coast, Skegness sits in a relatively remote location, reached mainly by two busy routes: the A158 from Lincoln and Grimsby, and the A52 from Boston and the South. This geographical isolation has helped shape a coastline like no other - a place where thousands of caravans and static vans form a patchwork of holiday parks, year-round homes and seasonal communities.
For some, these caravans represent freedom: a simple life by the sea, a place to escape, breathe, and belong. For others, they symbolise overdevelopment, pressure on local services, and roads groaning under summer traffic. Love them or hate them, caravans have become part of the coastal DNA.
The unseen population
One of the defining characteristics of Skegness and the surrounding coastal strip is the sheer number of static caravans — many occupied not just for holidays, but for much of the year. They are vital to the local economy, supporting tourism, hospitality and countless small businesses. Yet this population, living largely in holiday accommodation, often goes uncounted in official statistics. The result? A mismatch between the services needed and the services planned for.
A coastline of contradictions
From an aerial view, the holiday parks look almost geometric — neat, repeating shapes stretching towards the horizon. Tiki Taki little boxes. But inside each one is a life, a story, a reason for being here. A reminder that even the most uniform landscapes are filled with individuality. And perhaps, sometimes, tinned minds — those quick to judge without looking deeper.
Essential, complicated, and uniquely Skegness
Caravans have always been a point of tension. They bring prosperity while creating challenges. They shape communities while also stretching them. But without them, the Lincolnshire coast simply wouldn’t be the place it is today.
And standing quietly in amongst it all is John Byford, Leica in hand, recording the unrecorded — the people and the moments hidden behind those little boxes. Capturing the truth of a coastline that rarely tells its own story.
Mablethorpe, England ©John Byford
Ingoldmells, England ©John Byford
