Margate artist Tracey Emin has bought The Brown Jug pub in Dumpton as well as a number of Margate properties.
The property went onto the sales market in 2019. An initial sale did not complete and it went back on the market through Miles and Barr estate agents and Land Registry documents now confirm Tracey Emin is the listed owner with a purchase price of £550,000 paid on December 23, 2021.
It has also been reported by the Financial Times that Ms Emin has bought the former Victorian baths and former morgue in Dane Road/Victoria Road, Margate, with plans to create artists’ studios, an Emin museum and hopes for a sculpture park, artist residencies and a life drawing club. There are also understood to be separate plans for a training school, possibly in the catering/hospitality trade.
Tracey Emin returned to Margate after buying part of the former Thanet Press site in Margate in 2017 and converting it into an artist’s studio and flat.
The former Thanet Press site is also the home of the Carl Freedman Gallery which has gallery space, a base for his Counter Editions prints business and an apartment.
Talking to The Isle of Thanet News previously the artist, who is currently in remission from bladder cancer, said of her return to Thanet: “Margate has real energy and fantastic architecture, sunsets and seascapes and beaches. I think it has a really good chance of becoming a fantastic epicentre. London feels like it is completely crushing me.
“In Margate Turner Contemporary has boosted the whole economy and where there were boarded up shops in the High Street there are now fantastic boutiques, vintage shops and interesting restaurants.
“I do not want to wake up to London, I want to wake up and be inspired by the same things that inspired Turner.”
The artist also previously pledged £100,000 towards a proposed skate park in Cliftonville and has donated artworks for fundraisers, including for The Margate School.
The former Brown Jug pub is among 85 historic places in the South East that have been added to the National Heritage List for England during 2021.The building in Ramsgate Road has been Grade II listed.
The Brown Jug was originally constructed as a farm cottage, most likely in the 18th century. The building has seen multiple phases of development which are visible in its surviving historic fabric, and it is still possible see its original, simple two-room plan, particularly at ground floor level.
The building was likely converted to pub use in the late 18th or early 19th century, and documents of 1795 refer to the building as the Queen’s Arms Tap, and in 1813, an auction sale advertisement refers to it as The Brown Jug.
Its current name is listed in documents in 1814, when it is said to have been used as an officer’s billet.
Previous licensee Jenny Skudder ran the pub for some 60 years until it closed in 2019.
