American A-listers obsessing over places in the UK is no new phenomenon. Taylor Swift has repeatedly signalled her love of London – the capital is mentioned no fewer than 17 times in her songs – while Beyoncé and Jay-Z are reportedly in the process of building a seven-bedroom estate in the Cotswolds. Nevertheless, Rakewell was delighted this week to find that Madonna had taken to Instagram to gush about the English town she calls her ‘idea of heaven’: Margate. When she sang that she would take us there, just like a prayer, all those years ago, could this small seaside town be the ‘there’ she meant?
Located on a south-eastern tip of the UK, Margate – once a humble fishing village – evolved into one of Victorian England’s most desirable holiday locations, with Londoners flocking to its beaches to take to the water and saunter along its promenades. With this in mind perhaps it’s no surprise that Madonna has been drawn to a place with such strong ties to a bygone Blighty: fans will recall her ‘British era’ during which she purchased the Georgian estate of Ashcombe House in Wiltshire, the former home of Cecil Beaton, with her then-husband Guy Ritchie. Though Rakewell is more charmed by the Margate scene as it appears in Sickert’s Margate in the Time of Turner (1930), in which a donkey in the foreground is led above the harbour.
There is, however, a more immediate cause for Madonna’s Margate-mania: her friendship with Tracey Emin, a ‘pearl’ and ‘precious necklace that has been draped around’ the seaside town. Indeed, Emin’s championing of her home city over the past few decades has helped put Margate on the map for art lovers, and she runs a residency for young artists ‘hungry, possessed, and extremely grateful to have this opportunity’, in Madonna’s words. Other art-world aficionados have also set their sights here: Carl Freedman opened a second eponymous gallery in the city in 2019; in 2022, Frieze founder Matthew Slotover, developer Gabriel Chipperfield and artist Tom Gidley opened the Fort Road Hotel a mere two-minute walk from Turner Contemporary, named for J.M.W. Turner, who spent much of his time painting Margate’s seas and skies.
With all this talk of a town ‘inhabited and energised by creativity’, as our Material Girl puts it, your roving correspondent feels a weekend away could soon be on the cards. The only let-down is Madonna’s refusal to share the name of her ‘favourite Italian restaurant’ for fear that the one-table eatery will be overrun by copycat diners – though locals are confident that it is in fact Bottega Caruso. For now, all Rakewell can do is dream of a shared plate of pasta with the Queen of Pop by the sea.
