If you haven’t entered any dates, the rate shown is provided directly by the hotel and represents the cheapest double room (including tax) available in the next 60 days.
Prices have been converted from the hotel’s local currency (GBP116.67), via openexchangerates.org, using today’s exchange rate.
Stylishly dressed, art-studded, and offering a laidback welcome, Margate House is a modern townhouse B&B overlooking a steps-from-the-seafront square. Interiors pair lavish lighting, locally sourced art and flashes of ruby velvet with exposed brickwork, sisal floors and mid-century-style furniture for a grit-meets-glamour aesthetic. The same could be said for this boutique hotel’s Cliftonville setting, where you’re surrounded by locals rather than tourists, amid Northdown Road’s shops, cafés and bars – although the Turner, Marine Drive and the Old Town are only a walk away.
Noon; earliest check-in is at 4pm. With notice, the hotel can accommodate early check-in or you can leave your luggage at Margate House until your room’s ready.
Prices
Double rooms from £140.00, including tax at 20 per cent.
More details
Rates include a Continental breakfast of yoghurt, fruit and granola, fresh pastries, juices, tea and coffee.
Also
As the stone staircase leading up to Margate House’s period townhouse entrance suggests – and the hotel’s stairs-only four storeys confirm – this is sadly not a suitable stay if you’re a wheelchair user or have limited mobility.
At the hotel
Drawing Room, free WiFi throughout. In rooms: air-conditioning, Roberts Radio, hair-dryer, Krups coffee machine, tea-making kit, free canned water, fresh milk (dairy or oat), crisps and sweets, and Haeckels bath products.
Our favourite rooms
If you know you’ll be hitting the town from brunch until late, Small Rooms offer an affordable crashpad, only lacking in lounge space, or you’ll find more wriggle room in a Medium. All nine rooms are thoughtfully appointed in a rust-and-rose colour palette with luxury linens, custom-built mid-century-style furniture, plus pieces from local store L’Abstrakt, and eye-catching artwork. It’s the Large Rooms, however – one on each floor, filling the bay windows that overlook the square (with glimpses of the sea) – that top the podium: for their sitting areas, their whimsical seaside nods (wavy headboards, lighthouse-striped lamp shades), and their super-king beds.
Poolside
There’s no pool, but at low tide, you can swim in Walpole’s tidal seawater pool, which is a 15-minute stroll from the hotel.
Spa
There’s no spa at Margate House but let the Haeckels products in your room inspire you to book a treatment at the brand’s local outpost, a four-minute walk away.
Packing tips
With strong artistic leanings, Margate is Bohemia on sea, so pack your blackest separates, blockiest footwear, and biggest and brightest jewellery, shades and bags.
Also
The hotel’s staffed daily between 7am and 10pm; after that, guests have key access and assistance is only a WhatsApp message away.
Children
Margate House is best suited to couples and has an over-18s-only policy.
Sustainability efforts
Margate House is woven into its community in the seaside town of Margate, with locally sourced art, furniture – even breakfast pastries – and works with partner bars and restaurants to offer guests occasional discounts. Within the hotel, toiletries are full-size, refillable and from local spa brand, Haeckels. Water is canned (no plastic bottles); waste is recycled; toilet roll is bamboo, and if you forget your toothbrush, the hotel’s emergency brushes are bamboo, too.
Margate House has just the one – an antique stone-topped table at the heart of the Drawing Room.
Dress Code
A town full of artists needs no prescribed fashions.
Hotel restaurant
There’s no restaurant at Margate House, but the Drawing Room is the setting for Continental breakfast each morning, where you can fuel up on yoghurt, granola, fresh fruit, juices, coffee and tea, as well as glossy croissants and pains-au-chocolat. If you’re returning to your room during the day, a selection of snacks accompanies your tea- and coffee-making kit.
Hotel bar
Staff will happily fix you a beer or glass of wine to sip in the Drawing Room.
Last orders
Staff are on hand to make drinks between 7am and 10pm. Breakfast timings are agreed individually with guests.
Room service
You can request breakfast to be brought to your room.
Margate House is in Cliftonville, a 10-minute walk along the front from the Turner Contemporary, and closer to the caves and shell grotto than it is to the Old Town and main beach.
Planes
Southend Airport, a 90-minute drive away, is the closest international hub; it’s billed as London for some budget airlines that fly there (and the train links are pretty reasonable; take note if you're driving, there are tolls at Dartford), but the nearest more-official London-serving airports are London City or Gatwick, both also a 90-minute drive.
Trains
A choice of London terminals serves Margate station, including London Victoria and London St Pancras. On alighting at Margate, the hotel is a brisk 20-minute walk away along the seafront, or a taxi would get you there in five minutes.
Automobiles
You won’t need a car to enjoy this Kent resort – it’s all walkable – but if you’re bringing wheels, there’s free street parking around the hotel.
Worth getting out of bed for
Some of Margate’s highlights are obvious and keenly observed by most visitors: – taking the air on Margate Beach, strolling the esplanade, dipping into amusement park Dreamland’s vintage rides, food stalls and outdoor venue spaces, and wandering the galleries at Turner Contemporary. And the town’s Shell Grotto, a cavernous subterranean network of shell-adorned chambers, is worth a visit (not least so you can join the eternal debate about its intended use). As well as the Turner, Margate’s bountiful arts scene features Carl Freedman Gallery on Union Crescent (next door to Tracey Emin’s place), and weekend openings at Emin’s TKE Studios. Tucked away from the seafront, the Old Town is a characterful cocktail of cobbled lanes and diminutive squares: check out the (currently closed, but impressively façaded) 16th-century Tudor House on King Street, and blue plaques for Turner and his contemporary George Morland on the corner of Love Lane. Last but not least, Margate has two tidal pools (swim at low tide for the easiest conditions) – one on the front, and another at Walpole, the latter of which has a Haeckels sauna hut on wheels with seasonal opening.
Local restaurants
A lot of good things are said about Sargasso, a small-but-mighty shed-dining spot on the Harbour Arm, that is the sister eatery to East London’s Brawn. And those good things are true: sharing plates of seafood (piles of mussels, piquant-sauce-drizzled white fish, Cantabrian anchovies), antipasti, cheese and charcuterie rotate on Sargasso’s small menu seasonally, and the wine list is always accomplished. Perch at bar stools and graze on small plates at diminutive Dory’s on the seafront: it’s the little sister to Angela’s, and a study in local produce, from English wines to Kentish cheeses. Favoured Italian Bottega Caruso gets booked up with good reason: possible causes include the homemade tomato sauce, amazing fresh pasta, and classic desserts; plus, owners Harry and Simona also have a shop, and run cookery classes and food-themed events. Little sister dining spot Olivo is an excellent gingham-clothed second choice if Bottega is full.
Local cafés
Breakfast at Margate House is almost like a starter before you head out for brunch proper, so here’s a trio of nearby places to try: the Good Egg for Middle Eastern plates such as shakshuka, originally filled pita, and babka, babka, babka; record shop, hair salon and purveyors of excellent barista skills, Cliffs, or food-critic-approved Forts, famed for its fine coffee and focaccia sarnies.
Local bars
Margate has so many bars, but here are three of Cliftonville’s finest. A stroll up Northdown Road, Sète is a Gallic-flavoured bottle shop and wine bar, where aperitifs, bottled beers, softs, and vintages by the glass are served alongside rustic French plates and nibbles. Its setting beside a bowling alley couldn’t be more unpromising, but give Faith in Strangers the chance to share its discotheque loft and cocktail list with you and you’ll soon be close friends. Cliftonville’s queer bar, Camp is the place to sip and watch drag kings and queens do their thing.
Every hotel featured is visited personally by members of our team, given the Smith seal of approval, and then anonymously reviewed. As soon as our reviewers have returned from this seaside bed and breakfast in Cliftonville and unpacked their Haeckels spa products and Margsarita posters, a full account of their coastal break will be with you. In the meantime, to whet your wanderlust, here's a quick peek inside Margate House…
Owner Will Jenkins has overhauled a four-storey townhouse on a Victorian square in Cliftonville to create a thoroughly modern B&B in Margate House. Interiors are lavishly dressed in rust and rose with flashes of garnet velvet, statement lighting and audacious artworks; service is as attentive or discreet as you wish, and there’s a strong community feel to the boutiques, bars and cafés that Margate House works with (furniture and fragrances from L’Abstrakt, discounted first drinks at Sète, dinky bottles of mezcal from Mariachi). So far, so contemporary. And yet at heart Margate House is a romantic retreat that kindles minibreak nostalgia – a place for skulking lovers to return to after a heady night out, a homey space where you’re as welcome to clink cocktails in the glamorous Drawing Room as you are to order breakfast in bed (do both). Margate itself is a curious blend of DFL gentrification, dynamic creativity and unglossed everyday living, and in Margate House’s Cliftonville locale, you get a close-up of it all.
