Dreamland amusement park in Margate in Kent, UK, is being redesigned and restored. After years left derelict, the well-loved attraction is receiving a new identity, courtesy of über-cool studio Hemingway Design. The Dreamland Trust, which waged a long campaign to save the site, secured £18m ($27m, €24m) in funding from the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) and Thanet District Council to make the dream a reality. In addition, the new operator, Sands Heritage Ltd, has invested an undisclosed sum.
On the following pages, Dreamland Margate’s key players – designer Wayne Hemingway, the HLF’s Stuart McLeod and Sands Heritage director Eddie Kemsley – reveal how they’ve been bringing the iconic seaside attraction back to life.
The Dreamland renovation is one of a number of major attractions investments in the area. Kent’s scenic countryside and proximity to London make it an attractive proposition for tourists and daytrippers from the capital and a high-speed rail network makes travelling to the county easy.
The opening of the £17m ($26m, €23m) Turner Contemporary art gallery in Margate in 2011 helped rejuvenate the seaside town. Further investments in Kent include the £2bn ($3.2bn, €2.5bn) London Paramount development in Swanscombe, expected to open in 2020.
DREAMLAND’S HERITAGE
Dreamland has always been an icon and its history helped it get the heritage funding it needed. From its visionary beginnings, it was more than a visitor attraction. It shaped the future and fortunes of its quintessential seaside home, and simultaneously became a catwalk for the fashion and music trends that defined the nation’s youth through different eras.
The site dates back to the 1860s, when it was a venue called the Hall by the Sea. But Dreamland was really born in 1920, when its founder John Henry Iles returned from New York and saw Londoners were using the new railway to visit Margate, creating a demand for an exciting attraction with all the dazzle of New York’s Coney Island.
He purchased the Hall by the Sea for £40,000 and developed the attraction, inspired by what he’d seen in New York. Iles immediately installed the mile-long wooden rollercoaster – the Scenic Railway – and Dreamland’s popularity was instant.
“It was one of the UK’s most loved amusement parks and in its heyday it was welcoming an impressive 2.5 million visitors a year,” says Kemsley, who’s leading today’s Dreamland revival.
In 1935, an Art Deco cinema further transformed the town. The 2,200-seater Dreamland cinema and its unmistakable fin-style design heralded a golden era of Modernist cinema architecture in the UK. “It was one of the first examples of a real leisure complex, with its cinema, restaurants and bingo hall alongside the amusement park,” she says.
Dreamland was visited by the pioneers of youth culture, from the Teddy Boys and Girls of the 1950s to the punk rockers of the 1970s. But the 1970s also brought air travel to the British and Margate began to lose its popularity as a tourist destination as people started going abroad. “The decline of Margate happened over a period of about 40 years, and Margate’s decline was Dreamland’s decline,” Kemsley says.
During the 1980s, under the ownership of the Bembom Brothers, investments were made in the park and it was marketed as a family-friendly attraction. It was sold to Jimmy Godden in the mid-1990s – its demise was not reversed. By 2005, the site was often closed and rumours that Dreamland would be redeveloped were constant. Although the site became derelict, its closure provoked a huge reaction from the public.
“Dreamland was the heartbeat of Margate and its main economic driver for a century, so after the closure a protest group was formed by locals,” says Kemsley.
Thanet District Council gave its support to the group – the Save Dreamland campaign – and years of lengthy legal battles ensued as the site was wrangled from Godden. The council won control in 2013, using a compulsory purchase order.
“The Save Dreamland campaign worked incredibly hard for 10 years to save the site, and their work is what got us where we are today – on the final stretch before Dreamland reopens to the public,” she says.
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