Margate Synagogue is on the western side
of Godwin Road, at the junction with Albion Road in
Cliftonville. The number of parishioners for the synagogue have
dropped in the last forty years, but it still holds regular services
and social activities and in 2009 had 38 members. Margate Hebrew
Congregation is totally independent, but it only accepts worshippers who
are prepared to acknowledge the authority of the Chief Rabbi of the
United Synagogue.
St Anne's Catholic Church & Presbytery
is on Devonshire Gardens, Eastern Esplanade, a little north and east
of the synagogue. It is one of the oldest and most historic
buildings on Cliftonville sea front. The church was built during the
Victorian era and has in recent years been undergoing largescale
restoration work. During the Second World War the church's tower was
used as a lookout across the North Sea, and it still conducts
regular religious services for locals.
Christian Science Church stood (or still
stands) at 406 Northdown Road, south-east of St Anne's and alongside
the junction with Holly Gardens (to the right here). While the
buildings that occupied the site in 2009 were large enough to
contain a small church congregation, there was no outward sign that
a church still met here. All the signage was for free nursery
places. While this does not mean the church has closed, conversion
into full-time nurseries is common these days.
St Philip's Palm Bay is on Summerfield
Road, part of the Palm Bay community of the Northdown Park Estate that occupies the most
north-easterly region of Thanet. The estate first appeared in the
1960s and in 1982 it was suggested that it required its own church
separate from Holy Trinity Margate. On 25 July 1992 the first turf
was cut and W W Martin & Co Ltd realised the plans drawn up by
architect Mike Duncan. The church was consecrated on Friday 18 June
1993.
Holy Trinity Margate is on St
Mary's Avenue and Northdown Park Road, at the
very easternmost end of Margate and Cliftonville, below Palm Bay. It
too was built by W W Martin & Co Ltd in the 1950s to replace the
lost Holy Trinity Church in Margate. It sat alongside the existing
St Mary's Chapel (shown centre-left here) which was incorporated
into the new build. The much-loved chapel was built in 1892, while
the new church was consecrated in 1959.
Thanet Road Mission Hall, is on the way back
into Margate, on the northern side of Thanet Road midway between
Victoria Road and Dane Park. No information seems to be available on
its history, but to judge from the style of its construction it was
probably put up immediate before the Second World War or in the
years afterwards, and probably no later than 1960. Today it houses a
nursery school with no sign other than the cruciform window of its
previous status.