W hen I first started visiting Margate, about 20 years ago, there were only two real options when it came to choosing a hotel: the Walpole Bay, an eccentric Edwardian time capsule in Cliftonville, with floral carpets, an original 1927 trellis gated lift and a collection of unsettling “antiques” in the corridors (dolls’ heads, vintage typewriters, prams); or the Premier Inn, which had none of those things but was handy for the station. The first inkling that the long-hyped regeneration of Margate was more than just wishful thinking was when the Reading Rooms opened on Hawley Square in 2009 – two years before the arrival of the Turner Contemporary put the neglected seaside town back on the map. The motto of this boutique B&B with just three decadently beautiful bedrooms might as well have been “If you build it [they] will come.
” The gamble paid off. They did come. And the trailblazing B&B has since been joined by a flurry of new guesthouses and hotels, from the stylish Fort Road hotel to the arty Margate House in Cliftonville.
View image in fullscreen No.42 Margate. Photograph: PR The latest addition to this eclectic scene is No 42, the first seaside outpost of boutique chain GuestHouse Hotels, which opened in an elegant Victorian townhouse on the seafront last summer.
I stayed there once in its previous incarnation as the Sands hotel, and it is barely recognisable. Gone are the pearlescent wallpaper, padded doors and huge chandeliers. They have been replaced with a.
