About Hildreds Shopping Centre

The Hildreds Shopping Centre in Skegness was officially opened on Saturday 17 September, 1988 by the magician, Paul Daniels. The Centre comprises of thirty units with Co-Op (Skegness) being the anchor tenant. Well known High Street names such as Evans, Burtons, H Samuel, Birthdays, Game, La Senza, Card Factory, Home Bargains, Thorntons, W H Smith, Superdrug and Wilkinsons being just a few of the high quality shops within the Centre where you can buy anything from top quality fashion goods to the proverbial bucket and spade.


Hildreds Centre is only a sixty minute car journey away from Lincoln or Grimsby, making it an ideal location to do that spot of shopping in a stress free, comfortable, atmosphere close to all local amenities and leisure activities in the town. The Hildreds Shopping Centre is "The Heart of Shopping in Skegness" The Centre also has an integral car park with easy parking for over three hundred and twenty cars. Throughout the main holiday season the Centre is a hive of activity whilst during the Christmas period the whole Centre becomes a magical shopping experience when it is transformed into a fantasy Christmas wonderland with animated features and displays adorning every available space all designed and built by the Centre's own management team. In 1996 the Centre was awarded with a prestigious British Council of Shopping Centres design award for its Christmas displays and decorations, the fore runner to the Purple Apple awards. Situated on the east coast, officially recognised as "the dryer side of Britain", the Hildreds Shopping Centre is only a sixty minute car journey away from Lincoln or Grimsby, making it an ideal location to do that spot of shopping in a stress free, comfortable, atmosphere close to all local amenities and leisure activities in the town. The Hildreds Shopping Centre is "The Heart of Shopping in Skegness"

The Hildreds Shopping Centre, Skegness
Purple Apple Award Winners 2005


Over the past 19 years, the Hildreds Shopping Centre’s own staff have designed and built the seasonal displays that you may have seen during your visits.
The displays are all made from sheets of polystyrene that are cut out with a jigsaw, stuck together, carved by hand, covered in cement and hand painted to finish.

Over the years we have made everything from life sized palomino horses pulling Santa’s sleigh, Dickensian and Pumpkin coaches, 72ft long ice castles complete with gnomes waving from the battlements, a 24ft long pirates galleon with working cannon, a variety of polar bears and penguins, even a giant from Jack and the Beanstalk who hung over the side of a castle wall and shouted “Fee Fie Foe Fum” to the customers as they walked underneath.

Displays such as these transform the Centre into a winter wonderland that enthral customers both young and old.

As a direct result of this, in February 2005, the staff of the Hildreds Shopping Centre won a national award called a Purple Apple Award, which acknowledges the highest standards of marketing and promotion in shopping centres throughout the entire country.

There were 76 other shopping centres that entered this competition such as Springfields Spalding, Freshney Place Grimsby, Meadowhall Sheffield, Metro Centre Gateshead and The Bullring Birmingham. The Hildreds Shopping Centre won the top award, one of only 24 awards presented over the past 12 years.

As part of the competition prize, we also won an all expenses paid trip to the International awards in San Diego in October where we competed against an aray of shopping centres throughout the world.

The “Purple Apple” originated from an idea that if a purple apple existed it would be unique, unusual and stand out from all the others. The Hildreds Shopping Centre, although only small, has proved that by winning this award we are officially the best shopping centre in the country, offering our customers and tenants a service which is unique, perhaps sometimes a little unusual, but without a doubt, we definitely “stand out from all the others.”

Please see the New for Christmas in the news section on this web site for further details of what we have planned for this year.