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The Ruins of Margate

May 23rd, 2006 - 10:27am
Keeping with the seaside theme, I thought I'd post some rather sad photos I took in Margate last summer.

Margate is one of the south-east's poorest areas, a forgotten resort town in a geographical cul-de-sac on the Isle of Thanet, east Kent. It's a cheap and cheerful holiday destination for working-class Londoners and built its reputation on the fact, so suffered more than most during the package holiday boom of the eighties. Margate has lost its role, compounded by the recent drop in air fares.



This is all too obvious on visiting the town. These photos are of hotels around the beautiful Victorian clifftop gardens, once the centre of the resort. Derelict, burnt-out and half-demolished, it's heartbreaking to think of the slow decline that led to their abandonment; and the associated personal stories of bankruptcy, unemployment and despair.



But Margate is trying to pick itself back up. A lottery-funded project to build a Turner-themed centre on the pier is underway; on which Thanet Council, with an air of desperation born of a serious lack of options, is banking all its hopes of regeneration. Turner loved the town and its skies and spent a lot of time here. The Centre will reflect that and celebrate what is still - against all the odds - a beautiful place.



It's easy to laugh at the project - a middle-class, arts-led attempt to rejuvenate a traditionally working-class resort. But that is to ignore the extraordinary artistic wealth of this corner of Kent. Just up the road in genteel Broadstairs, daytrippers are attracted in droves to a tourist industry based on Dickens' connections with the town. Fifteen minutes drive takes you to Canterbury, with its Chaucer-themed attractions and medieval history. Twenty minutes in the other direction will take you to gentrified Whitstable, a middle-class, foody Mecca, who's Margate-like deprivation in the eighties and nineties has been forgotten.



I have high hopes for Margate. The Turner Centre, an ambitious project that will no doubt be greeted with considerable press interest once completed, could make it the centre of an already thriving historical area it has so far been shut out of. Despite its recent problems, Margate is still a destination for daytripping Londoners and has a boozy, raucous air that appeals on many levels. Its neglect over the last thirty years means that much of its Victorian charm has escaped redevelopment. Bring those two things together and add a world-class arts centre, and maybe Margate could be successful beyond its councillors' wildest dreams.