A little place by the sea

Beach huts: This summer's must-have
The Weekender

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Imagine a website that advertises properties with the headline "no mod cons". Who would make such a boast? For beach-hut fanatics, aka "hutties", being cut off from modern living, with no lavatory, electricity or running water is all part of the allure of the chalet lifestyle. When it comes to real, old-fashioned beach huts - the wooden ones measuring about 12ft by 8ft rather than the luxurios chalets like the batch that sold in East Devon for £2 million - the more primitive the better.

The website www.beach-huts.co.uk carries adverts for huts for sale and offers advice, from the latest "Hut Watch" schemes to combat vandalism to the best way to paint a hut to protect it against bad weather. There is even a section on "hut cuisine": meals you can cook on a camping stove. Plus there is the latest hut news from the "hut hound", such as the ground-breaking plan in Southwold, Suffolk, beach-hut capital of the UK, to allow hut-owners the right to buy the plot of land they are situated on.

Beach huts are ideal bolt holes for warm weekends in England, or even for proper holidays if looking out from the square window really appeals. But you can't sleep in the majority of huts, which are strictly for daytime use. There is more to them than just having somewhere to make tea and keep towels; a beach hut puts a different-perspective on the seaside when you have somewhere to sit and take it all in: smelly seaweed, breakwaters and all. Beach-hut communities thrive in genteel places and fail to make any headway anywhere with a pier or an amusement arcade. Southwold, a two-hour drive from the capital but ever popular among professional Londoners, now has beach huts on sale from £8,000 to £40,000, which is about £l0,000 more than a fisherman's cottage costs in nearby Lowestoft. Beach huts here rarely become available - there are only 254 of them - and when they do they are snapped up.

Owners have to buy a council licence costing about £250 a year, plus they have to pay a minimal council tax to cover services such as beach cleaning and public toilet maintenance. They also have to pay £40 a year to get the huts lifted off the sea front during the winter and moved to a safer location in case of storms.

Sussex-born mother of four Sarah Rollo, who lives in Reydon near Southwold, bought her hut for £3,500 nine years ago and could sell it now for almost £20,000. But it is not for sale.

"We use it every weekend from May to September, and we get there early for bacon butties and a swim," says Sarah. "More than anything, we love the sense of being away from it all, because all you can see from inside the hut are the sea and sailing ships. I even had a book-club meeting here the other evening. It was so peaceful with the sound of the waves lapping on the shore."

Frinton-on-sea in Essex has 800 huts. They are less picturesque than the Southwold ones but they do come up for sale regularly because of their high number. Prices go from about £l8,000 up to £25,000 for the best ones, which are raised above the promenade on a stretch of beautiful sandy beach known as The Wailings. These 12ft by 8ft wooden huts have an outdoor platform at the back for sunbathing, and because they are raised up, nosy passers-by cannot see in. There are scores of other huts on the beach at Frinton with no platform at the back, but the location isn't as desirable. They cost from £8,000 to £l5,000.

Angela Cooke has just sold a hut at nearby Walton-on-the-Naze for £3,750, having bought a better one in Frinton. "We had it for three years and used it from dawn to dusk in the summer," says the 48-year-old mother of two. "They're perfect for the English climate because when the rain starts you get out the Monopoly board or cards until it clears. You can cook in them, and then dump all the family stuff there if you want a walk. And they're so old-fashioned. I love the huts. They are a part of an England that has gone by."

All of Frinton's huts should be painted in brown stain rather than paint. It protects them against bad weather, but they don't look as pretty as the picture-postcard pastelcoloured huts. Only old huts that survived a big storm in l977 are allowed to remain white or blue, although the rules are starting to relax a little.

Owners pay £l50 a year for their licence to keep their hut on the sea front. Fifteen years ago, outsiders weren't allowed to own huts in Frinton at all. Colin Barton, of Ian Smith estate agent, says "Since the 'locals-only' rule changed the prices have increased because Londoners pay anything for them. I have nothing against Londoners, but local people don't get a look-in now." Barton warns anyone considering buying a hut to insure it properly: "There has been an increase in vandalism and arson, and they go up like a row of sticks when one catches fire, particularly the raised huts because of the huge drought underneath. We tend to lose three or four in an arson attack, not just one."

Tracey Emin's sale of her art installation, a Whitstable beach hut, to Charles Saatchi for £75,000 didn't do any harm to the area's beachhut prices. The candy-coloured stretch of huts that run from the stylish Thirties-style Continental Hotel in Whitstable down to the nudist beach at Tankerton are fetching good prices. This year one was sold for £l4,000 to a lady in Essex who wanted to make her frequent visits to Whitstable more homely.

The huts in Whitstable are four or five deep and staggered on a grassy slope that runs down to the promenade. They are set up on stilts or bricks to keep dry, like most beach huts. On www.beach-huts.co.uk, Whitstable huts start at £6,000, and Ward & Partners of Whitstable have two for sale, one on Tankerton slopes for £9,000 and another further up in Marine Crescent for £8,500.

Bexhill-on-sea, near Hastings, has hundreds of huts, some owned by the council and rented and others privately owned. "They were only fetching about £l,500 a couple of years ago," said a spokesman from Findlay estate agent. "Now, one goes up and it has gone in a week and they are fetching up to £6,000. We don't really know why. Perhaps people are holidaying in the UK more and that has pushed up demand."

Trawling through the information on the net about beach huts, it is obvious that beach hut culture in the UK is rather different to the rest of the world. In the US and Australia, owning a beach hut means having a luxurious house on the coast where wealthy neighbours congregate sur mer to relax in style and buy luxurious lobster and champagne suppers from on-site culinary outlets before getting into the hot tub under the stars.

In the UK, it is the lure of a cup of Tetleys and a ploughman's before locking up and walking home for a liberal application of aftersun that is attracting buyers. Oldfashioned though beach huts here are though, they never seem to go out of fashion.

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