British seaside towns contribute more than their fair share of the country’s iconography: fairground piers, fish and chips, Punch and Judy puppet shows. High on that list are beach huts—those “colourful sentinels on the border between land and sea”, in the words of Kathryn Ferry, a historian and co-founder of the Seaside Heritage Network, which campaigns for a renewed appreciation of the country’s often-faded coastal resorts.

Beach huts are small wooden sheds, often painted in bright pastels, lined side-by-side up and down the British coast. They’re changing rooms, kitchenettes, storage spaces and shelters all in one, with a typical footprint of around six foot by six foot. They may look like a large box, but their price tag tells a different story. Owning one, particularly in sought-after corners of Dorset or Suffolk, is absurdly expensive.

In 2012 incredulous newspaper headlines reported the sale of a hut on Mudeford Spit in Christchurch, a town on England’s south coast, for £170,000 ($270,000 at the time). Now a local estate agent is advertising several for nearly triple that price. Unlike most such places, the Mudeford huts can be slept in, but even the most expensive one, listed at just under half a million pounds, has no running water.