Fantasy Island Theme Park
Free-entry theme park with the famous pyramid, big rides and Europe's largest seven-day market.
Find food, pubs, caravan parks, fishing and things to do in Ingoldmells — all in one place.
Ingoldmells sits just three miles north of Skegness and has, over the past four decades, transformed itself into one of the densest concentrations of holiday parks in the country. Fantasy Island anchors the village — its iconic pyramid visible for miles — and around it sprawls a network of caravan sites, static parks, market stalls, late-opening bars and family-friendly food spots that hum from Easter through to October.
Local knowledge
Quick on-the-ground tips from people who know the area.
Local guide
What visitors actually need to know about Ingoldmells.
Ingoldmells sits just three miles north of Skegness and has, over the past four decades, transformed itself into one of the densest concentrations of holiday parks in the country. Fantasy Island anchors the village — its iconic pyramid visible for miles — and around it sprawls a network of caravan sites, static parks, market stalls, late-opening bars and family-friendly food spots that hum from Easter through to October.
Landmarks
The headline attractions and landmarks every visitor should know about — tap for opening times, contact details and what's on.
Free-entry theme park with the famous pyramid, big rides and Europe's largest seven-day market.
The legendary outdoor market — bargain stalls, food and crowds through the season.
Family farm attraction on the edge of Ingoldmells — perfect rainy-day backup.
The huge resort park anchoring the north end of Ingoldmells.
Wide, flat sand backed by dunes — quieter than Skegness and great for kids.
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📍 Shown to people looking for things to do TONIGHT on the Lincolnshire Coast
Showing tonight's events across the coast — see all what's on in Ingoldmells.
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Fish & chips, Indian, Chinese, kebabs and family takeaways across Ingoldmells — see menus, opening hours and call direct.
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Traditional pubs, sports bars and live music venues in Ingoldmells — find what's on tonight and where to drink.
Ingoldmells
Static caravans, touring pitches and holiday parks in and around Ingoldmells — perfect for weekends and full breaks.
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Coarse fishing lakes, day-ticket ponds and outdoor spots near Ingoldmells — great for an active day out.
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Events, attractions, arcades and family fun in Ingoldmells — see what's happening this week.
Plan your trip
Quick-read guides to help you plan your trip.
More local guides
Useful TripTock guides for Ingoldmells, connected from the main town page.
Local history
Ingoldmells looks, on first glance, like a 1970s caravan town that grew up around Fantasy Island. The reality is much older — and much more important to British holiday history. The first ever Butlin's camp opened here in 1936, and the Domesday Book recorded a settlement on roughly the same site nearly a thousand years before that.
Ingoldmells is recorded in the Domesday Book of 1086 as "Guldelsmere" — a small Anglo-Scandinavian settlement on the saltmarsh edge of what was then a much wider Lincolnshire fenland coast. The name itself is Old Norse: "Ingjald's sand-banks," reflecting the wave of Viking-era settlement across this part of the East Midlands. For centuries the village made its living from salt-making (a hugely profitable industry in medieval England), fishing, and small-scale sheep grazing on the marshes behind the dunes.
St Peter and St Paul's Church, parts of which date to the twelfth century, is the only substantial pre-modern building still standing in the village. The medieval coastline ran considerably further east than today's beach, and erosion combined with managed reclamation gradually pushed the village inland. By the eighteenth century, Ingoldmells was an unremarkable agricultural parish of fewer than 200 people.
Skegness's railway-era boom from the 1870s onward had a quieter knock-on effect at Ingoldmells. As Skegness filled up in summer, day-trippers and longer-stay visitors began walking and cycling north along the dunes to find quieter beaches. The first basic camping fields opened around the village in the 1890s, catering to working-class families from the East Midlands who couldn't afford the new Skegness boarding houses.
Through the early twentieth century the village remained tiny — but the framework was there: cheap land, a sandy beach, easy reach from Skegness station, and a tradition of low-cost holidaying. It was exactly the combination Billy Butlin was looking for.
On Easter Saturday, 11 April 1936, Billy Butlin opened the first ever Butlin's holiday camp on a 200-acre site at Ingoldmells. The camp was an instant phenomenon — the all-in-one model of accommodation, meals, entertainment, sport and childcare on a single fenced site was completely new in Britain, and it sold out for years in advance. The Ingoldmells site is the founding location of the entire Butlin's brand and is one of three camps the company still operates today.
Butlin's success transformed Ingoldmells. Independent caravan parks sprang up along Roman Bank and Sea Lane through the 1950s and 1960s; the famous Ingoldmells outdoor market opened in the early 1970s and became one of the largest of its kind in Europe; and Fantasy Island, opening in 1995, gave the village a free-entry theme park to rival the seafront attractions of Skegness. By the late twentieth century the village's population had multiplied many times over, and it had effectively merged with Skegness into a continuous resort strip.
Today Ingoldmells is, per acre, one of the most caravan-dense places in the UK. The permanent population is small — around 1,500 — but the seasonal population swells into the tens of thousands. Fantasy Island and the Ingoldmells Market are still the two biggest single attractions; the bar and entertainment scene around the Beachcomber, the Warren and the Country Park venues runs hard from Easter to October; and the original Butlin's site continues to evolve with regular major investment.
The challenge facing Ingoldmells is the same one facing the whole Lincolnshire Coast: shifting it from a deeply seasonal economy to a year-round one. Off-season the village is quiet to the point of feeling abandoned. But the foundations laid in 1936 — affordable, accessible, family-friendly seaside holidays — are exactly the foundations the modern industry is building on.
1936: Easter weekend. Billy Butlin opens the first ever holiday camp on a 200-acre site behind the dunes.
2026: One of the densest concentrations of caravan parks in Europe, with Fantasy Island, the market and the original Butlin's still trading on the same sites.
Just along the coast from Ingoldmells — easy to combine in one trip.
Browse more in Ingoldmells, including food, pubs, caravan parks, fishing and what's on, then use the area links below to explore the wider Lincolnshire coast.