HERITAGE
Alice Davis, managing editor, Attractions Management
Dreamland was the original leisure complex, with cinema, bingo, music concerts and more
DREAM BIG
Dreamland, Britain’s oldest theme park, is being brought back to life thanks to Hemingway Design, a new operator and a healthy dose of heritage funding. We meet the “Dream Team” making it happen
D 40
reamland 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
London Paramount development in Swanscombe, expected to open in 2020.
The cinema and Scenic Railway star in Dreamland Margate’s new logo
proposition for tourists and daytrippers from the capital and a high-speed rail net- work 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)
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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.
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