Carry on Cliftonville

Originally posted on Isle One

Legend has it your average Guardian reader can slash a couple of decades off his life just by taking a wrong turning onto the mean streets of Cliftonville en route to Broadstairs.

But it wasn’t always like this: up until a few decades ago this murky pocket of seaside deprivation was a highly desirable place to live – something that’s heartbreakingly evident on those rare days when the sun streams down through the huge sky, putting a sheen on some of the most beautiful Georgian and Victorian architecture you could ever hope to clap eyes on.

Despite its obvious edginess and genuinely shocking levels of poverty, Cliftonville is one of the most enchanting places in the country, with a rich history and an architectural curiosity around every corner. If this place can’t turn itself around and become a brilliant place to live once again, surely nowhere can.

The fact that Hattie Jacques and John Le Mesurier’s old family home is just a few minutes stroll from the Winter Gardens sums up Cliftonville’s glamorous past perfectly. This corner of Thanet was once so fashionable that a couple of the country’s best-loved comedy actors were itching to raise their kids in a slice of Kentish seaside utopia. Well, that was the idea anyway: in the end Hattie had an affair with a used car salesman and subsequently moved him into the family home. It wasn’t too long before Sergeant Wilson packed his bags and shuffled along the coast to Ramsgate.

Albion Lodge on Trinity Square is suitably adorned with a blue plaque in honour of its former occupants, but god knows who lives there now. It appeared on a property website a couple of months ago at a monthly rent so criminally low it must’ve made the estate agent weep all over his cheap suit. But with an upcoming BBC biopic in the pipeline, surely it can’t be too long before some enterprising soul comes along and turns it into a museum?

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