20/06/2022
This Refugee Week (20th-26th June 2022), Cliftonville Voices will be highlighting the contributions of many of the communities who have made the area their home over the years. Today, we focus on the Greek Cypriot community.
Greek Cypriots had maintained a presence in the Margate area since the forties, primarily working in the hotel and food industries connected to the holiday trade. Among many others, the Majestic Hotel on Eastern Esplanade employed a chef by the name of Papa Savva, while community leader Kyriacos George Kourea owned the Florendia Guest House opposite Nayland Rock. So many Greek Cypriots lived in the area that in 1969, the Greek Orthodox Church of the Archangel Michael was consecrated at Westbrook by the late Archbishop Athenagoras. This still thriving community continues to celebrate the Feast of the Holy Archangels each November in Margate, holding a Blessing of the Seas and the dive of the Holy Cross – literally, a ceremony in which participants plunge into the harbour to capture a Holy Cross which they compete to return to dry land.
Following the Turkish invasion of Cyprus in 1974, Cliftonville became an obvious place to house many evacuated refugees, with at one point as many as 300 Greek Cypriot families reported living there. Families relied on handouts from the Red Cross and local church and community organisations to survive. That year, accompanied by sympathetic locals, the community silently marched along the seafront between their Church at Westbrook and Palm Bay, demonstrating their grief and concern for their homeland.
While in the following years, many Greek Cypriot refugees joined either the larger communities in North London or moved to southern Cyprus, many families stayed and made their mark. In 1975, the five Adams brothers took over the Glenwood Hotel on Edgar Road and Reubis Restaurant at 351 Northdown Road seeking to make it “the best eating house in Thanet”.
Many descendants of these Greek Cypriot families continue to live and thrive in Cliftonville and the surrounding area, and we hope to tell more of their story through the Cliftonville Voices exhibition and website.
