In the autumn of 2013 my husband and I moved to the wilds of East Kent from the suburbs of south London. We left because we wanted all the cliches every jaded Londoner wants: clear skies at night, a soundtrack of birdsong instead of sirens and a house that could accommodate a proper dining table as opposed to one of those origami ones that looks half table half, half Southern Rail drinks trolley. We also left because age had made us deeply unsociable creatures. A place where we didn’t have to see another living soul then seemed like paradise on earth.
Back then East Kent was famously untamed, with the vast North Downs at one end and the eerie wetlands of Romney Marsh at the other. It’s why Turner came here to paint, Dickens to write, and TS Eliot to see out a massive nervous breakdown which resulted in him writing part of The Waste Land in a Margate seaside shelter.
Places like Margate have long been an obvious draw but things are hipsterfying in every corner right now
Now you see everyone east of E2 and south of SE16 hot-footing it down to this once quiet corner of the UK. My social media feeds are filled with half of London’s media living it up on the beaches of Whitstable and Broadstairs. The foodie crowd are flocking to Deal’s hottest new farmhouse-cum-restuarant, The Uptown, while the once desolate shingle shoreline of Dungeness, with its towering beachside power station, now feels like a nuclear Hamptons. (Ed Sheeran just spent £650,000 on a converted railway carriage).
Of course places like Margate have long been an obvious draw, thanks to The Turner Contemporary setting up shop here in 2011. The fact that Tracey Emin returned to her home town last year and that Libertines frontman (and Margate resident) Carl Barat opened the town’s fanciest new nightclub, Justine’s, makes it all the more desirable.
But things are hipsterfying in just about every corner right now. Take Folkestone. This once frankly icky town, famous for not being Dover, has had a gentle gentrification job not dissimilar to that of New York’s Hudson Valley. Huge amounts of ambition and investment by Creative Folkestone (an arts foundation set up by former Saga tycoon Roger De Haan) has transformed this sliver of a town, just 50 minutes from London, into an artistic paradise with an incredible food scene. There are more outdoor pieces of art in Folkestone (including works by both Emin and Sir Antony Gormley) than in any other town in the UK. The Harbour Arm, a tiny former promenade, feels like Soho-on-Sea crammed as it is with dinky independent food and drink outlets. Down the coast there’s Hythe, where you’ll find one of the most exciting restaurants right now (ssh..it’s called The Hide & Fox) while the Isle of Sheppey, once famous for little more than its prison, has become the destination for burned-out millennials looking for open vistas and luxury shepherd huts.
At last, one of London’s most overlooked neighbouring counties is finally getting its moment in the sun.
The National’s football play is a winner
One of the most exciting shows of the year is on at The National Theatre. Writer James Graham has scored a winning goal with Dear England, a play about Gareth Southgate and his reinterpretation of what it means to manage England’s football team.
This is ostensibly a play about football, sure, but really it’s a story about culture, leadership and demonstrates why Joseph Fiennes, who plays Southgate and looks uncannily like him, is one of our most underrated actors of all time. (Full disclosure here, I am a trustee of The National, but I still maintain this is one of the great plays of our time).
Many of our finest arts institutions are still recovering from the effects of Covid, so if you need any excuse to head out and support them this summer, this, in my advice, would be the hot ticket to get right now.
Farrah Storr is Head of Partnerships for Substack UK
