Margate Blues

(Margate photographs Antony Clayton)

A couple of years ago we paid a visit to Margate on a wet and overcast summer Saturday. Amidst the beautiful Georgian and Regency architecture, it was noticeable that the town was very rundown. An article in yesterday's Guardian confirms this, highlighting the depressing fact that Margate has the highest number of shut-up shops in the country – 37.4%.

On our visit I took some photos of the imaginative way in which the windows of some of these had been transformed into striking painted papier-mâché displays, together with a sadly optimistic list of possible retail uses for the shop – examples above.

The much-vaunted ‘Bilbao effect’ is becoming an increasingly desperate gamble by local authorities to regenerate poor and deprived communities – the Turner gallery is due to open by Margate harbour in April 2011. On our visit a temporary contemporary gallery in an abandoned high street store (possibly a former Woolworths) held some interesting work, but an impressive sculpture constructed purely from ice cream cornets looked rather forlorn after having probably suffered the attentions of a hungry child.

The delightful and unusual shell grotto is worth visiting but the Margate Cave has been closed since 2005 owing to subsidence and looks unlikely to reopen in the near future. Since then it has been an obvious destination for ‘urban explorers’.