Outside the Sunset Rock Shop on Marine Drive in Margate a blackboard declares: “We’ve got more Margate Rock than East London has hipsters.” To which the obvious retort is: “Yes, because all the East London hipsters have moved to Margate.”

Not for nothing has this resort on Kent’s Isle of Thanet coast gained the ironic epithet Shoreditch-on-Sea in recent years.

A decade ago, says Keith Marsh, the owner of the Sunset Rock Shop and the author of that sly blackboard slogan, Margate was on its knees. “Every shop in Market Place was for sale or derelict,” he says, referring to the heart of the Old Town. “Now you’ve got your hipsters coming down and every shop is occupied.”

Sure enough, down in Market...