Qualla: Humberston Fitties

Humberston Fitties: Introduction

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Chris, CC BY-SA 2.0. Every winter, by rule, residents of the Humberston Fitties must vacate their chalets between four in the afternoon and half past nine the next morning, throughout January and February. The rule is strictly enforced. The point is not to make anyone uncomfortable. The point is to preserve what one chalet owner called the 'impermanent spirit' - the idea that this place is a holiday camp, not a town, and that everything here is meant to feel slightly provisional, even after a hundred years. The Fitties has been resisting its own permanence since the 1920s, when families first moved into the disused army huts the soldiers had left behind.

Read more: Humberston Fitties on Qualla

Image: Chris | CC BY-SA 2.0

Humberston Fitties: Foreshore Saltings

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Graham Hogg, CC BY-SA 2.0. The name comes from Norse. Fitjar meant foreshore saltings - the marshy grassland where the sea licks the land. Vikings settled this coast in the ninth and tenth centuries, and they left their words behind in the place names. In 1960 the Grimsby Rural District Council tried to ch...

Read more: Humberston Fitties on Qualla

Image: Graham Hogg | CC BY-SA 2.0

Humberston Fitties: From Army Huts to Plotland

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit JOHN BLAKESTON, CC BY-SA 2.0. During the First World War, the army built billets in the dunes for soldiers stationed at Haile Sand Fort just offshore. The Manchester Regiment trained here. Pickets watched the coastline between Cleethorpes and Tetney Lock for German raiders. When the war ended and the men went...

Read more: Humberston Fitties on Qualla

Image: JOHN BLAKESTON | CC BY-SA 2.0

Humberston Fitties: The Sea That Tries to Take It Back

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Chris, CC BY-SA 2.0. In 1921 an abnormal tide washed away several bungalows. In 1953 a storm surge breached the dunes. The council planted marram grass, drove in brushwood fencing, and spent six thousand pounds on more dune defences in 1956. In 1958 the Department of Scientific and Industrial Researc...

Read more: Humberston Fitties on Qualla

Image: Chris | CC BY-SA 2.0

Humberston Fitties: Bungalow Town

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit MOTORAL1987, CC BY-SA 3.0. By 1947 there were sixty huts and bungalows. By 1956 there were three hundred. At peak season as many as six thousand people could be accommodated. A doctor's surgery opened in 1960, along with a grocer, a general store, and a fish-and-chip cafe. 'Walkie pictures' photographers h...

Read more: Humberston Fitties on Qualla

Image: MOTORAL1987 | CC BY-SA 3.0

Humberston Fitties: The Threat From the Council

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Steve F, CC BY-SA 2.0. In 1986 the First Leisure Corporation, owners of Blackpool Tower, tried to buy the Fitties for six million pounds. Chalet owners protested - the council had not offered them first refusal on their own freeholds. The deal collapsed in March 1987. Two years later Whitegate Leisure ...

Read more: Humberston Fitties on Qualla

Image: Steve F | CC BY-SA 2.0

Humberston Fitties: What You See From the Air

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit David Johnson, CC BY-SA 4.0. From altitude, the Fitties shows itself as a fine-grained maze - tiny wooden boxes arrayed along sandy lanes between a strip of dune and an inland lagoon. The lagoon is the third most important saline lagoon in Britain, a Site of Special Scientific Interest where sanderling, grey...

Read more: Humberston Fitties on Qualla

Image: David Johnson | CC BY-SA 4.0