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| Peppered stems in focus |
It was September, and raining. Houses stood silently, on the periphery of leafy Hawley Square. I was seeking solitude within the walls of one: number thirty-one, The Reading Rooms. A boutique B & B, opened in 2009, beautiful – so the whisperings go. The square was peculiarly silent, the drizzle had deterred the day-to-day, shunted it elsewhere. My feet had found it, number thirty-one, my hand too found its way to the imposing knocker which I lifted to induce two dull, ungracious thuds in signal of my arrival. Louise answered, quickly and with an unassuming welcome that I suspect is bestowed on many of her guests. I followed her in and she led me to ‘Room One,’ effortless steps. Door swung: that day a stultified afternoon light eked through the floor-to-ceiling windows – leaves rustled on the outside now – they were there and we were here, some place else. We sat opposite one another in decorous chairs. She sat, comfortably but not like she owned the place, more like she fitted in it - somewhere within its working. Stems, peppered white, serene in their vase on the table between. I sat, intrigued and slightly bemused by the subversive beauty of her (and partner Liam’s) creation. (For clarification, Liam was not present for our conversation, but it is him to whom Louise refers in the ‘we’s’ throughout.)
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| Reflecting in decorous chairs |
The room settled around us. Reason for settling in Margate became our starting point. Louise was thoughtful, and almost encyclopaedic in her explanation for it. She and Liam had moved from Florence to Hackney in 1998. The time had come for them to move on from the by-the-book Renaissance beauty of Florence, which turned pages past for self-affirmation. Hackney, by comparison offered shoots of beauty in its subtext: it was East London and it was changing. However, disillusionment quickly infiltrated Louise's voice: the cultural quarter and ‘Cool Brittania’ phenomenon set to enliven Hackney was not yet a reality. It had perked up an awakening but there was, for Louise, something problematic in Local Authorities investing in something that they didn't understand. And yet, still, the potential for change that had drawn them to Hackney in the first place became part of the specification when they were moving on. That way, Louise said “you always have something in front of you.” Other reasons, thoughtful, thorough, crowded the space between us. They were insatiable renovators steering change as well as chasing it; “we found that we would move above a shop in Hackney, something the local estate agents said no one wanted, redo it, and see it in a different way.” Their pursuit of unspoilt beauty led them to Margate. Louise affirmed, “we really like beautiful architecture, it doesn’t mean that its necessarily expensive, its just living in something that someone’s nurtured”. That was evident from the room that we sat in. The Reading Rooms marked their fixation with change, both being part of it but also being responsible for orchestrating some of it: it was another of their renovations. It was also strangely motionless in spite of the change it had undergone. It had settled into itself. The change passed is now fixed and manifest with the interesting features that exist throughout, testament to the need to acknowledge the past, but also make space for ‘something in front of you.’
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| Chinks of changing light on stripped back originals |
In 2007, Louise read, about Margate and what it had to offer, a whole suite of things were happening: the gallery was coming, and she added being “built, by a really good architect”. Emphasis stood out, loudly, on the ‘really good’, she had a palpable understanding of the fabric of the town and real attentiveness to the buildings - "it was a brave and intuitive choice by the Council to choose Chipperfield", she said. There was also the promise of a high-speed rail link. She went on to sell me the virtues of the one hour twenty eight minute train slog that I, along with many others, I am sure, have so often willed to be faster: “I have spoken to friends about this and we think its better.” “For being longer?” “Yes.” “Why – because there’s more time to settle into a book or do some emails?” “Because it means that it’s not a commuter town, and it means that people change their lives… its on the edge of comfort but it means that the town isn’t dead in the week – it also means you always get a seat."
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| Opening books on Margate |
A discussion of railway and its
impact on Margate led me to ask Louise’s thoughts on what she felt had led to the demise
of the coastal towns. Railway was the great engine of connectivity, as it
chugged its way to Margate in 1846, so did additional tourists. The railway
meant that the seaside economy boomed, the downfall of such trade is often
linked with the insurrection of cheap package holidays. Louise was decisive in
her response: “the whole line that
everybody peddles out about the downfall of British seaside town being the
cheap package holidays – I don’t believe it...” Mass tourism had
meant that the seafront had catered to a mass market, until it was fit to
combust, and this was no longer sustainable. It had imploded. There was
exasperation in her voice, understandably. If you own something, which stands
proud in its will to create a perfect beginning, middle and end for its
visitors, to offer something unique, catering for 'mass markets' is simply not
an option. Louise later went on to plug the importance of the unique, the
modest, the organic and spoke of Thanet based food companies featuring in the
Good Food Guide. It was about bringing and cultivating something different, and
then nurturing it and watching it grow. She had aspired, and achieved in
bringing something extraordinary to this British seaside town.
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| Something extraordinary |
Louise’s will to give
something back to the space, meant that she had an innately perceptive view of
what worked to make the most fundamental elements of its beauty. The coast,
peninsular, was after all – what it was all about. Mass tourism of the 80’s
hadn’t given thought to this in its glossy guidebook pages, devoid of geography
and bursting with attractions: “it
trampled over why towns like Margate were here in the first place… the early
tourism guides that we’ve got tell you about the geography and the geology of
Margate, and the air and the water and the bay and how the sea works and how
the chalk reef works and how the waters are still so that you can paddle out […]
that’s why tourists came to the town, that’s why its here, that’s why its
developed.” She was a real conserver of beauty, and a perpetuator of it
too. The accumulation of the purist elements of Margate’s coastline that she spoke of, sketched an
image that was not subject to change. The coast, as peninsular, was a
fossilised fundamental. For her short 4 years in Margate, Louise
had certainly sought out and seen it, “it
is about space, space between places” – finding them without maps or guides
was part of the experience. Louise spoke of guests and the direction their feet
took them without guidance, as if the coast spelled obvious walks without
signposts. It was time to slip off of the map. She spoke of a proposal to
create a coastal park, running 25 miles “to
create a concept of coast which runs beyond boundaries and beyond postcodes –
because some maps, don’t have Reculver Towers on them because they’re defined
as Canterbury.” “Really – that’s absurd – they are the most obvious point
on the eye-line?” “Yes its completely
absurd.” They were no longer reflectors of one another, cartography and
coast, but conspirators in worryingly, distracted separation.
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| Space between places |
Something extraordinary lay in Louise’s ability to distil the purity of what lay at the heart of Margate. We were to move our conversation from coast, to conservation more generally. “You seem to be interested and very much involved in much of Margate – do you have any other projects flourishing, apart from the Reading Rooms?” One of the more intricate and smaller scale things she had become involved with intrigued me: “I set up the Friends of the Countess of Huntingdon’s burial ground which is an abandoned Georgian cemetery behind the post office. Its preserved, a little haven of wildlife […] we got it locked up because it was vandalised, and it was delicate, and it has a lot of important Margate graves in there – the Cobb Family memorial […] they were a brewing and banking family who were really intrinsic to the development of Margate.” People rarely visited the graveyard anymore, not least because the stones are so removed from any living person that there is no one to stand and silently remember. Louise’s encyclopaedic voice confirmed: “you could no longer be buried there, after the burial act and everyone was being buried in Margate cemetery, then there was no reason for people to go to this cemetery any more…” Now, it was time and people remembered again.
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| Remembering and dismantling time |
We had talked much outside of the space we were settled within, you are, undoubtedly and understandably curious about ‘within’, so was I. Louise and I drifted back into the room to unpack the multifarious life and times of the Reading Rooms themselves. In 2009, when they found the house it was owned by an eighty year old Irish gentleman and divided into ten bedsits. The room that we were sitting in was Louise confirmed, a room and a bedroom and it had a kitchen. The bathroom was another bedroom. “So it was a huge project – how long did it take to renovate?” “Not that long, I think we did it in six months.” A remarkable transformation, and yet it seemed normal to Louise that this should be another renovation which saw and acknowledged ‘something different’ in her repository of many. The house’s alterations go far further back than 2009, of course. It was one of the first houses built on the square, which was, as Louise put it “an experiment in tourism, tourism which didn’t really exist before. The sea was not a place to go on holiday, the sea was a place of work and danger, so taking sea air was a new thing…” As Louise traced its 250 year history, it was evident that the house had seen and suffered the demise of the tourist trade, being used for tourism initially and then as low quality accommodation in the 70’s and onwards. Fortuitously, the diminishing value of the building had worked in its favour, it had been patched and bolted together, retaining many of its original features under the surface of its ‘functionality’ – “there’s lots of things that have been saved by people not having the will or perhaps the finances to actually mess them around too much…”
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| Reflecting on the rooms |
The will to conserve that had infiltrated our conversation, led me to ask one of the questions I’d come armed with – “one of the things on your website, you talk about preserving layers of things, which really interested me. Is that a will to retain some of the history in a really visible, obvious way?” Her time in Florence became manifest: “I think its more of a European approach to conservation […] maybe more Italian that you don’t fill something in and make it look perfect […] sometimes when you repair frescos when you see them now – they will block in the repair in grey, and they won’t rebuild the, necessarily, rebuild the lost bit.” I looked around the room wanting to see the pieces of history. Louise’s vision crystallised, for me, in her next sentence: “it’s about having the scars of the 250 years so you should feel that your place in it is where it is on that timeline…” This means that in the Reading Rooms plaster work and brick work are exposed, and that the bathrooms are modern, not a pastiche of what preceded it, they are definitively some place else, some time else: “modern bathrooms…they’re kind of like a pod.” “A pod of separate time maybe?” “Yeah.” I looked around again. “It’s really tangibly imaginative.” “I don’t know…” she said, smiling.
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| Finding your place on the timeline: a wonky backwards |
There was something fascinating about the transitory nature of the space in which we sat. Chairs in which many other, now unknown, guests had found themselves and a room too beautiful for extensive inhabitation. Guests of many faces flickered across my mind. They had memories here but they hadn’t left them behind. Memories were muted by fresh laundry, newly folded towels and a menu yet to be pencilled upon. One of my favourite quirks of The Reading Rooms is that the menus for breakfast are left on the tables with a pencil. You make a note of your order, leave it outside of your room and the next day breakfast is delivered. Louise confirmed that menus left out with pencils bode for the outpouring of guest’s innermost thoughts and secrets (read: doodles and thank you notes). The Reading Rooms are the only place in the country that still does room service as standard and yet it seemed completely sensible when Louise explained it – less food waste as they cater exactly to their guest’s requirements, and no awkward exchanges in a claustrophobic downstairs dining room where everyone is suited and booted before 9am. “What kind of cross section of visitors do you get?” “We get a really wide range of people, we wouldn’t want people to come and think its all a straightforward, everything perfect place, because its not – Margate isn’t and we aren’t […] in general, we have people that are kind of up for that…” Louise paused, poised and almost delicate in her honesty and obvious will to create, well, a sort of sanctuary really.
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| Freshly folds and sanctuary |
There is an unacknowledged selflessness involved in owning a Bed and Breakfast, in being the organiser of any event for people other than yourself. Louise’s unassuming presence confirmed this. We were in an incredible space, that she (and Liam!) had created and yet, she confirmed: “I think that the space, is not my space – it’s a guest space, even if I sleep in here its not going to be the same for me as it is for a guest coming to Margate because their plans are their own…” In providing people with a room of their own, I asked whether it felt odd, setting up spaces for others to enjoy. She responded with, something she’d read: “I was reading an interview with Ian Schragar, who invented the term boutique hotel – he’s quoted as saying that if you can understand what it takes to sprinkle the magic fairy dust for people to have a good time in a disco, then you are best placed for working in the service industry…” Not only a reader of Margate, of what it meant to run a hotel, but also of people from the beginning of their stay to the end. It is in the unwritten rules that you must adjust to guest's moods and be receptive to absolutely everything – their raised eyebrow, furrowed forehead, slight twitch of the left nostril etcetera. This is all part of understanding what kind of guest is inhabiting the space, that for that period, is theirs. Louise rises to this responsibility successfully, every time. The contented reviews of guests past confirmed this. “You know, we speak to people who say, oh I’m thinking of opening a bed and breakfast, I’ve looked at your place, I’d like some advice, but I’m not going to do it as nice as yours – something like that they’ll say, and I don’t know what that means…” She looked positively quizzical. We laughed.
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| Guest space |
Following talk about the second B word, Breakfast, our conversation was to close on the first: Bed, and the pursuit of perfection. This was drawn in from further eye casting on my part - not that you could really miss the huge frame, fitted with undisturbed white linen. My question about where Louise had sourced the bed incited a wealth of research. Long answer short, the beds were specced up from a French antique company. A library swayed behind Louise, wanting to be opened up and explained; Louise spoke of the post war mass marketing of divan beds: “its quite extraordinary that they used to market this ‘mattress on a box…’” We then spoke mattresses, again, consideration was lent to their guests every need “you haven’t got time to adjust, you’ve got to sink into it on the first night so its specced for that…” Every facet, of every facet, really had been thought about. It came of no surprise to me that I should return to Room One some weeks later to find an ageing Ward Lock & Co.’s illustrated guide book of Margate on the shelf, unpacking its geography, revealing why it's here. The light refracted in the same room, differently on a crisper day in October, it was altogether lighter - evident of the subtle changes that happen in the space of hours, of weeks, as well as the larger ones that take many years. Louise was a great conserver of space and of the oft forgotten space between places. She was also a great reader, of place, of people. In the short space of one September hour, I can safely say that she had ‘furnish’d me/from mine own library, with volumes…’, opened chronicles I had yet to discover: invaluable, beautiful and now, conserved in conversation.
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