“Bonkers and brilliant,” tweeted Grand Designs’ Kevin McCloud when he heard about a new Kickstarter project from Margate-based former film-maker Dom Bridges. I can only agree: it takes a particular vision to decide that what the ramshackle and characterful resort needs is not only a range of fragrance and beauty products decocted from Margate’s pongy marine plantlife, but also the revival of that most Victorian of follies, the sea-bathing machine.
Bridges’s atmospheric and rather lovely apothecary store gazes out to sea, over the Cliftonville Lido (fate currently to be decided). It’s here that he cooked up the idea for a latterday reinvention of those wooden wagons originally designed to protect Victorian modesties. But these are more than simply beach huts on wheels (although that’s a desirable proposition round these parts: at the time of writing, a plot of concrete plus beach hut in nearby Whitstable is on the market for a laughable 120k). The new Margate sea-bathing machine is a more evolved and complex creature, designed to house a sauna utilising seaweed-based “Made of Margate” products, be staffed from the local community, and focus on an element of seaside living – namely, its invigorating health benefits – overlooked in a welter of fish’n’chips and kiss-me-quickery. According to Bridges, there’s no reason why Margate shouldn’t reclaim its role as “a Mecca of natural health”.
The architect, Chloe Young, and the craftsmen who will be employed to build the machines using traditional techniques are also local to Margate. Part of the design includes a “modesty hood”, first seen on the original machines and devised in the town by Benjamin Beale, an 18th-century glove and breeches maker. The hood was necessary back then because nude bathing was surprisingly common, but the contemporary version has been created as more of a sanctuary, a conduit between sauna and sea, that most bracing of plunge pools.
Margate’s affordable properties, creative energy and a swooping seafront that has moved everyone from JMW Turner to Tracey Emin are magnets right now for people who want to make even the most curious of ideas reality: artists, upcyclers, innovators and visionaries. And ideas don’t get much more curious or engaging than this one. I’ve already pledged to Bridges’s Kickstarter campaign because I can think of nothing nicer than seeing them installed on my local beaches, employing locals and giving users a rejuvenating blast of briny Kentish thalassotherapy. “It’s born out of my love for the English coast,” says Bridges, “a reminder of all that it has to offer us.” Bonkers the project may be, as McCloud pointed out, but it’s also inspired and, yes, quite brilliant.
