“It’s a bit hackney-on-sea”- the evolving face of deal says the financial times…….

Foodies and families are transforming the cultural landscape of the coastal Kent town once renowned for smugglers and pirates.

How things change. The beach — where, on a clear day, you can see the continent — is still pivotal to Deal’s appeal.

“Just being able to be on the beach or to look out to sea is a great boost,” says Gavin Esler. The former television presenter and author and his wife, violinist and composer Anna Phoebe, were part of an early wave of recent relocators to the area.

In the past year, larger family homes have outperformed the rest of the local housing market. Rightmove data shows the average selling price for a detached house in Deal was £524,481 over the past year — a slight increase of 1 per cent on the previous year, compared with a fall of 8 per cent across all property types in the town. Schools play a big part in the decision for some of the incoming families who are buying those larger homes. One recent relocator from London appreciates the small class sizes in her daughter’s primary school. At secondary level, grammar schools include those in nearby Dover and Sandwich; for independents, Dover College and St Lawrence College, near Ramsgate, are both within a half-hour drive.`

“There’s a critical mass, now, of people who enjoy going to great places,” says Ruth Leigh, another of Deal’s newer residents who spotted an opening in its growing food scene. Leigh, 39 — the daughter of Londonbased chef Rowley Leigh — and her partner Oli Brown, also a chef, have turned Updown Farm, a 17th-century Grade II-listed farmhouse just outside Deal, into a destination restaurant-with-rooms. “Fifteen years ago, there wasn’t a deli with great coffee, or a nice cocktail bar. Now it’s a tiny bit Hackney-on-Sea, but with its own identity.” This newly cosmopolitan Deal may look very different to how it did a decade ago. But some things remain reassuringly unchanged, says Esler. “Walking along Middle Street, the cottages go back several hundred years — and so do the legends and stories. That won’t change, even if the smugglers have been replaced by tourists and day-trippers.”