How a deprived corner of Kent became a magnet for London's wealthy

Telegraph

05-07-2025

Jamie Currie is sitting on a bench in Margate eating an ice cream with his 92-year-old father, David. The thing about the town, he says, is that 'it's a mixture between a good manicure and dirt under your fingernails'.
It has long been cheery, but deprived. But in recent years, it has become a fashionable magnet for Londoners, nicknamed 'Shoreditch-on-Sea'. Nearly 6,000 people from the capital relocated to the wider district of Thanet in the three years following the pandemic alone.
This invasion of so-called DFLs (Down From Londoners) is a gentrifying force, especially in Margate's Cliftonville neighbourhood – stretching from the Turner Contemporary on the harbour arm to the Walpole Bay Tidal Pool.
Telegraph analysis, using data from our tool, found that Cliftonville West is the place that has gentrified the most in all of England over the past decade.
This is based on a combination of household disposable income data, higher education attainment, house prices and a deprivation score, taking into account everything from poor health and disability rates, to crime and access to services.
The numbers lay bare a rapid pace of change. Property in Cliftonville West costs double what it did in 2010, the proportion of residents who are university graduates almost doubled between the 2011 and 2021 censuses, and average earnings shot up by more than £10,000 between 2012 and 2020.
Long-time locals and newcomers alike are keenly aware this has been both a blessing and a curse. But few believe things can go on in this way.
'I don't like things either too bleak or too tidied-up,' Currie, 55, adds. 'But I don't know how long that's going to last.'
The top 0.1pc for deprivation
'Cliftonville as a name was invented by Victorian property developers,' says Dan Thompson, an artist and historian.
Back in Charles Dickens' day, Margate was seen as 'a bit common and rough around the edges'. In a bid to make it look more upmarket and encourage tourism, homes in the brand new neighbourhood were built as deliberate replicas of London's stucco terraces.
'So the whole argument about DFLs,' adds Thompson, 'that's what this town is for, it's what it's always been for. It was built for that.'
But therein lay the crux of the town's eventual decline – an almost exclusive reliance on seasonal holiday trade.
'After the Second World War, Margate didn't build any new hotels, it didn't build a new theatre or a conference centre, which all the other seaside towns did. So those places became more attractive to take your children to, and it became very much a day-tripping resort,' says Thompson.
The hotels that once lined Cliftonville's streets closed down, leaving behind neglected properties ill-suited to local families.
As early as the 1960s, London boroughs began snapping up addresses for affordable housing. What was left was truncated into tiny, cheap flats which, according to a council report from the early 2000s, attracted 'vulnerable and transient people to the area'.
At that time, hospital admissions for alcohol or drugs were running at five times the average for Kent, and it accounted for 12pc of all crime in Thanet, despite housing just 5.5pc of the population. Knife amnesty bins remain on a few squares today, harking back to these more violent times.
By 2010, the western end of Cliftonville encompassing the notorious Ethelbert and Athelstan Roads was the 33rd most deprived area in England, putting it in the top 0.1pc.
'A new tribe moved in'
The turnaround since then has been stark, and one of the engines of this revival may be art. 'I'd say the Turner Contemporary is singularly responsible for the regeneration of Cliftonville,' said Heather Tait, 61.
Since the gallery opened on the seafront back in 2011 – on the site of a boarding house frequented by the acclaimed Romantic painter JMW Turner – it has contributed more than £100m to the local economy, it claims, in the process establishing the town as a 'vibrant creative destination that artists and creatives now call home'.
Tait is one of those artists who, with her husband, a sculptor, arrived from Brighton shortly after, attracted by the relative affordability of housing and the stimulating 'rawness' of the place. 'The first wave of arty-farties came when the Turner opened up,' she says.
By the end of the decade, rock band The Libertines had converted a dilapidated Cliftonville B&B into a boutique hotel, and Time Out was on the cusp of pronouncing it the coolest neighbourhood in the country.
After the pandemic, however, 'the energy changed' says Tait. 'The influencers started coming down. It didn't feel like it used to. A new tribe moved in – quite exclusive and wealthy.'
Hollywood also contributed to Margate's newfound glitzy appeal, with 2023's Empire of Light starring Olivia Coleman and directed by Sam Mendes prompting a flurry of celebrities. Last year, Tait left for Scotland.
Thompson was also very much a part of this 'first wave', migrating from Worthing back in 2013. 'If you came back then, you knew you were coming to a place where things would have to be done,' he says.
'You knew that if you wanted a nice coffee shop, you might have to open one. You had to get involved in the community. You knew that this town needed help and needed things to happen.'
He adds: 'The wave that came down during and post-Covid were coming down seeing the town as finished. It had coffee shops, it had wine bars, it had galleries, it had all of that. They were coming down as consumers.'
'Old-time Margate people hate DFLs like us'
Margate's fortunes started to rise in the Old Town, making Cliftonville the new frontier for the more recent influx.
Sophie Brown, 34, moved from south London eight years ago. In 2022 she, her wife and three friends opened CAMP, a queer bar and community space on Northdown Road, the bustling commercial spine of the neighbourhood.
'There are a lot of old-time Margate people who absolutely hate DFLs like us. They think that we're coming in to gentrify the place and really destroy it. We think we're making it better and also trying to make things better for local people.'
At a time when gay bars are shuttering across the land, CAMP has managed to keep the lights on, but it is tough and getting tougher.
'We're finding more so now that we have to step up prices, and actually I went to London recently and I didn't think our prices were that much lower anymore,' she says.
'But you can't price things for DFLs, expecting everyone to be on a London wage. The biggest thing for most people who have left London is that they can't afford the quality of life that they want there.'
The housing market is perhaps the best indicator of this change. Brown sold her first house in town at more than double the purchase price just three years later, to a pair of Londoners.
'But that was a different time,' she says. 'We bought into the dream of what it was going to be, which fortunately it was.'
Between 2020 and 2022 alone, just over 18,000 people uprooted themselves to Thanet from the rest of the UK. Some 6,000 of them came from London – a third of the total.
Transactions averaged £229,000 in Cliftonville West over the past year, according to HM Land Registry – almost double the £117,000 in 2010.
The pressure that this places on those who don't own property is all too real. Thompson was left homeless for six months last year due to a lack of affordable rental properties. Others can be seen sleeping rough under the Victorian shelter that fronts the main beach.
'I think the bubble is bursting a bit,' says Brown. 'Maybe the true colours are coming out with Reform coming in, and maybe people are realising it's not all as rosy as it seems here and there was a community here long before we showed up.
'People that were born and bred here, and they're pretty angry at us. We are part of the problem, there's no sugar-coating it.'
'People have had enough'
In the May local elections, Kent County Council recorded the largest swing to Reform in the country. As the frontline for small boat arrivals across the Channel, Kent would seem fertile ground for the party.
And while the proportion of white British residents declined only slightly over the decade between the 2011 and 2021 census, at 68.6pc, Cliftonville West is the most diverse neighbourhood in Thanet.
But this was not what Jamie Henderson, the freshly elected Reform councillor for Margate, thinks got him over the line by just over 200 votes. 'People have just had enough of the old school.'
He adds: 'I was out canvassing at a food festival and they were all coming up to me saying 'You're in the wrong place, we're all lefties here!' At that point I did think, 'Yes, maybe I didn't have it in the bag at all.' So there are a lot [of DFLs]... but not enough.'
Tourists, meanwhile – Cliftonville's old lifeline – are flocking back. 'Every year the number of visitors increases,' says Jim Moran, 72, down on the sands of the Grade II-listed Walpole Bay Tidal Pool.
'The [number] of businesses is increasing, mostly street food and fine dining. It's a different demographic, but the traditional seaside holidaymakers are still well catered-for.'
According to Cllr Rick Everitt, leader of Thanet District Council, the Cliftonville of today is 'the result of many years' work to improve living standards and housing stock, reduce deprivation and tackle the number of sub-standard rental properties.'
Thompson adds: 'If you'd have come here in 2004 and spoken to local people, you wouldn't have wanted to come back.
'Now even the most grumpy of locals, who are moaning about the dog s--- and the bins not being emptied, they'll also tell you that the beaches and the sunsets are beautiful.'