A celebration of Northdown Road with its Summer Open Party

Aston Walker adds a splash of colour to the fun

Live music and performance, window displays, cake sales and an art exhibition at Lovelys gallery are some of the events on offer today (July 17) at the Northdown Road and Friends Summer Open Party.

The party is to showcase the road, businesses and community and it is hoped it will become an annual event.

It also coincides with the 130th anniversary of Lovelys and there is a wealth of activities to mark the milestone. This includes the Lovelys Living Gallery – an interactive window display where artists, customers and passers-by are invited to create their own beautiful artwork on the walls inspired by iconic local landmarks.

Visitors to the shop can also see the striking mural created by artist Rory Strudwick, which was commissioned by Lovelys to mark the anniversary year and author Nick Evans will be signing copies of his book New Town on the Cliff from 2pm-4pm.

Aston Walker independent funeral directors are also joining in with the ‘world’s most colourful hearse’ for Disneyland day and prizes for all the children who come and say hello especially if dressed in Disney costumes.

9 Comments

  1. What is there too celebrate about Northdown Road , it’s like a war Zone really depressing compared with what it used to be like .
    No more lovely stores or Thornton Bobby/ Munro Cobb/Bobbis department store/ Cuthbert’s James Decor,could go on.

  2. Swathes of empty shops, criminal gangs, fly-tipped waste, dirty pavements-a few cakes & some gay pride car isn’t going to change that reality. You want to buy anything other than cakes, paint, coffee, Eastern European foods or find a decent supermarket then you have to go to Westwood. Can remember you could get pretty much any hardware items at James Decor or Padgetts-you are s out of luck the last decade or so if have to do anything round the house & are relying on Margate shops.

  3. Having lived in thanet since 1979, I also remember the “good times” and all of those lovely shops. Maybe if the negative people had used them more frequently, they would still be trading…just a thought. Moving on though, at least some people are trying to make it a great place again so well done.

    • They did, but the greedy bosses of the big companies closed them like M&S & Superdrug in favour of Westwood, the mom & pop stores also assisted by TDC rent increases making it virtually impossible for them to trade.

      • This story is about Northdown road. Not Margate high street.

        There has not been a Marks and Spencers or a superdrug or pop up shop in Northdown Road.

        This person doesn’t seem to be local to Cliftonville or know the area or been to it lately.

        To many people judge the area without actually knowing it and to many people are actually believing it

    • Thank you for writing this. As hard working family shop owner I appreciate your comment. The articles written by this company are always so misleading and not put together well. I just don’t know how they thought a story about how small retailers are trying to draw people back to Cliftonville area could start the feature with the funeral parlour when it was mainly organised around Lovelys anniversary with many small business also involved as well as the funeral parlor.
      This maybe why the negative posts about the death of Northdown rd!
      The lazy journalist should be ashamed and don’t these companies have editors anymore!

      • This is not a feature about Aston Walker, they appear at the bottom of the content and their picture is used as the main image because it is colourful and has children enjoying themselves. The top is about all businesses, the middle about Lovelys and the end is the funeral guys. There was already a full feature published about Lovelys 130th anniversary. Perhaps you would like to point out what stories you think are misleading? As a Thanet resident who spends my time providing a Thanet local news source (and no, we are not a big company we are also a small trader) I feel your comment is somewhat unfair.

  4. At least people tried to lift the gloom – typical negative comments from resident Thanetians that have dogged the island for decades, destroyed its industry, tourism and now trying to stop the reopening of Manston. Do you want to stay an area where our children have to move away if they want a career or do you prefer the filth and litter of today?

    Great comments if you want to stay an
    impoverished area but íf you wantCliftonville and Thanet to be prosperous then get
    a “CAN DO”attitude quickly.

    • I think you will find it is the Council that destroyed its tourism & industry-via decades of incompetence, greed & corruption, not the public.

      Do we want yet another failed airport stuck in the middle of nowhere to join the long list of them going back to post WW2, promising swathes of jobs that never materialise & creating vast noise & air pollution? Not really.

      I think most people in Thanet actually want a prosperous area, but don’t buy into the art galleries & airports that go bankrupt over & over Kool-Aid routine. This is nothing more than PR fluff-just take a look around at the town, if the council were bothered the high street & Cliftonville wouldn’t be fully of empty stores & so dirty-they only clean it when the royals or some other ‘VIP’ comes here. You can have whatever gimmick buzzword attitude you want, it doesn’t mean a damn thing when the council have control of the purse strings & make their own decisions with their buddies regardless of public opinion-like Kemsley sitting on a board & awarding the debt ridden Albatross Dreamland she manages millions of pounds.

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