Hackney’s latest outpost in Deal

“Knackered-out seaside towns on the Kent coast” are not everyone’s dream destination, says Mark C. O’flaherty in The Daily Telegraph. But these days they are home to a growing number of former east Londoners, who found they could swap their small flats in Clapton for sprawling family houses in faded south coast resorts adorned with “UKIP rosettes and a mega-wetherspoons”. Places where “every newcomer is dismissed as a gentrifying upstart by last year’s newcomers”– they’re not my cup of tea. That said, I can see the appeal of Deal. Its Hackneyfication began long ago, and the latest establishment to get the treatment is The Rose. This used to be one of Deal’s “most notorious pubs... each pint came with a frisson of danger”. Now, thanks to a makeover by interior designer Michelle Kelly and designers Harding and Read, it’s a “chic seaside inn”, with a dining room that echoes Whitstable’s The Sportsman, “but without six weeks of jumping through hoops for a table”.

There are eight bedrooms, “each a different, well-choreographed romp of emerald green and hot pink”. There’s Farrow & Ball paper on the walls; the fabrics are from Liberty; and the rooms come with turntables and vinyl albums of Joni Mitchell and The Beach Boys. Indian rugs line the hallways, and House of Hackney sofas adorn downstairs. This place is “that rare bloom: a boutique hotel that doesn’t look like Soho House”. Still, you have to wonder what the “dishevelled old regulars” make of it all as they are discreetly redirected outside, to try their luck at the boozer across the road. Rooms from £125 b&b. 01304-389127, therosedeal.com.