Margate: Vision Direct challenges beachgoers with game

       A proud seaside town once dubbed the “Monaco of the south” is now littered with decaying graffitied attractions standing as sad monuments to a long-gone heyday.

       Like the rollercoasters that often cling to Britain’s coastal resorts, the fortunes of Margate in Kent have gone up and down over the past century.

       In 2020 during a tour, Madness frontman Suggs called Margate the “Monaco of the South” and ever since the early 18th Century the area had been a popular tourist destination for people travelling the short distance from London.

       But Britain’s biggest tidal pool of its kind, a once-bustling 1920s Lido complex and a historic 1911 Winter Gardens are now mostly in decay, boarded-up or covered in graffiti.

       And the Second World War brought more destruction with almost 3,000 bombs dropped on the settlement destroying 300 buildings.

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       The enormous Walpole Bay tidal pool (Image: Getty )

       The 1920s lido covered in graffiti (Image: Getty )

       The lido in its glory days in Margate (Image: Getty )

       Investment has been attempted over the years, with the Turner Contemporary art gallery complex created to celebrate the town’s association with legendary painter, J. M. W. Turner.

       In one of the artist’s most celebrated works, The Fighting Temeraire, Turner captured the mournful last days of the HMS Temeraire, a ship that fought with honour in the Battle of Trafalgar, being towed to its final berth to be broken up for scrap.

       Margate too in its glory days played a key role in British history by the sea, playing host to thousands of visitors seeking to escape the smoggy air of London for some fresh air on the coast.

       The town boasted a spectacular Victorian pier, which was sadly destroyed by a storm in 1978, and in the 1960s mods and rockers used to come to Margate in their hundreds.

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       A bustling Margate around 1900 (Image: Getty )

       The J.M.W. Turner gallery (Image: Getty )

       Sadly in recent years much of the landmarks that made up the seafront have fallen into disrepair. The famous lido built by John Henry Iles lost more of its structure in heavy rains in 2021.

       Local historian Nick Evans told KentOnline there had been ideas over the years about how to develop many of the faded attractions.

       He said: “There have been various ideas over the last 20 years about what to do with the Lido itself. A few years ago the people who run the Sea Life centres were said to be interested in having one there. That seemed quite an exciting idea but nothing happened.”

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