The Isle of Thanet, a thumb of land protruding from the Kent Coast in England, has always been a draw for creative types. T. S. Eliot wrote there, referencing “Margate Sands” in “The Waste Land”; Broadstairs was a favored getaway of Charles Dickens; and the 19th-century painter J. M. W. Turner supposedly said “the skies over Thanet are the loveliest in all Europe” — a sentiment no doubt shared by many of the artists who are again coming to the area.

In recent years, this coastal stretch on the North Sea has become a redoubt for them and tuned-in Londoners — London’s answer to New York City’s artsy satellites of Hudson and Beacon, N.Y. — aided by a new high-speed rail link and an expressway linking the British capital with Kent.

“The town has picked up, and that’s the best thing,” said John Cripps, a 58-year-old Margate native and volunteer with the Dreamland Trust, an organization working to reopen the 1920s Dreamland amusement park, once one of the town’s premier attractions. “We lost our way a little bit, but people are starting to come back.”

In Victorian times, Margate, Broadstairs and Thanet’s other resorts towns were celebrated for their recuperative air and therapeutic waters, hosting such institutions as the Royal Sea Bathing Hospital and the Home for Convalescent Children of the Better Class. In the 1960s, as Margate became a holiday spot for working-class East Londoners, the town became associated with seaside kitsch and saucy beach weekends, known more for its “Kiss Me Quick” hats and lewd postcards than its cultural inheritance or health-giving water.