Call to action

From across Margate Bay, the prickly silhouette of the new Turner Contemporary art gallery points towards the sea like prows of departing cruise liners. Here at last is the inspired intervention in economy and townscape to encourage resurgence in the south-east of England as has been catalysed by Tate St Ives in the south-west.

Margate has a history of imaginative investment in high capital cost ventures to draw people to Thanet. The Royal Sea Bathing Hospital was opened in the 1790s to provide a cure for tuberculosis. John Rennie’s stone pier was completed in 1815 to allow steam packets to land visitors from London. An iron jetty reaching 50 yards out to sea opened ten years later so that more holidaymakers could land at low tide, while in the 1920s the pleasure park Dreamland grew out of the remnants of a zoo and circus, to emulate Coney Island in New York.