Hoser's Corner
Ethelbert Crescent
A family tea garden that became a Cliftonville social landmark.
Researched and Written by Katie Blythe
A Place On The Corner​
On Ethelbert Crescent, at the corner opposite where the Queen’s Hotel once stood and beside the cliff passage known as Newgate Gap, there was once a place that everyone in Cliftonville seemed to know: Hoser’s Tea Gardens, affectionately remembered as Hoser’s Corner.
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Part tearoom, part souvenir shop, and part family enterprise, it began as a humble seaside shack and grew into a treasured fixture of Margate’s Jewish and holiday life. For many locals, its importance lay in its role as a landmark as much as a place to stop for tea. As Ernestine Ruback recalled, it was filled with “umbrellas, buckets, spades, all the things they used to sell”, built into the everyday flow of the area and “part of the scene” of Cliftonville life.
Umbrellas, buckets, spades,
all the things they used to sell.
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Ernestine Ruback
The Hoser Family Arrives in Margate​
The Hoser family’s story in Cliftonville began with Jack Hoser, born in 1904 in London. In 1925, he married Becky Stander in Bethnal Green, and together they had five children: Max, Harold, Cyril, Leonard, and Ronald.
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In 1935,the family moved from London to Margate for the sake of their son Max’s health, as doctors believed the sea air might help his asthma and heart condition. Sadly, Max died aged only 13, but the family decided to remain in the area. Jack and Becky became active in the local Jewish community and Margate’s seaside economy.
Local Councillor Jack and Becky Hoser, the parents of Harold and Cyril.
Sam Ridler and step d-in-l Marlene Hoser become mayor and mayoress
Jack was elected as a Labour councillor and helped establish the family’s first local businesses, including a hotel and, later, the Dorchester Tea Garden, complete with a jukebox and slot machines, which was soon renamed Hoser’s Tea Gardens.
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Jack died in 1958, aged 53, and was buried in the Hebrew Section of the Margate Cemetery. Following his death, Becky married Sam Ridler, known locally as “Bingo Sam”, at the Margate Hebrew Congregation synagogue.
Building Hoser’s Tea Gardens​
…my dad and his dad bought and built a tea garden called Hoser’s Tea Garden. They literally built the shack and created a tea garden. Gradually, they expanded it: a kind of shanty building, flat roof, simply built, but they built it themselves until we had lots of little departments.
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Tania Hoser​
1990 photo of Hoser's Corner
Hoser’s Tea Gardens was built quite literally by the family itself. As Tania Hoser recalled, her father and grandfather “bought and built a tea garden”, starting with a simple shack that they constructed by hand. It was a modest, flat-roofed, almost shanty-like building at first, gradually expanded and adapted over time until it contained “lots of little departments”, each added as the business grew.
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It was Jack Hoser and his son Harold who transformed a bare patch of land on Ethelbert Crescent into Hoser’s Tea Gardens, buying the wasteland next door to their home at No. 28. They started by selling tea from a small timber structure, but soon began noting everything that their customers requested, ensuring that they could sell these in the future. Eventually, they steadily developed the business into a bustling café and souvenir shop.
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As Jewish traders, they encountered licensing restrictions and limits imposed by local traders’ associations, but they responded with ingenuity. When they were not allowed to sell stamps, they gave them away with postcards instead. When books were prohibited, they created Hoser’s Public Library, inviting customers to join by purchasing a book. Eventually, a storm ripped the original Hoser’s Tea Gardens sign clean off the front of the shack. Rather than reattach the long title, the family opted for something simpler. Hoser’s Corner was shorter, easier to paint onto the wood, and practical enough to withstand the seaside weather.
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By the 1960s and 1970s, Hoser’s Corner had become part of Cliftonville’s summer rhythm. The prefab café was often busy, especially on sunny days, filled with the smells of hot water and tea leaves, and the steady sound of coins dropping into the till. Holidaymakers, local families, and regular visitors who returned every summer crowded around the tables. Inside, displays of jewellery, toys, and glassware were featured, while outside, rows of buckets, spades, and sandcastle flags tempted passers-by heading through Newgate Gap to the beach below.
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Tania remembered serving teas there once as a child, carrying trays of proper china cups, not paper ones, out to the tables and carefully keeping track of who had ordered scones and who had chosen rock cakes. The work could be busy and sometimes demanding, but it formed part of the everyday life and character of Hoser’s Corner.
It was busy, especially on a sunny day. There’d be the smell of hot water, tea leaves, frying, and the sound of coins going in the till. You’d have holidaymakers, families, regulars, people who came back every summer… I used to serve the teas when I was little: proper china cups, not paper ones. I’d carry the trays out to people sitting at the tables. You had to remember who’d had the scones and who’d had the rock cakes!
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Tania Hoser
Maxine Hoser with her father Cyril.
Hoser's Corner in later years.
Politics & Show Business
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The next generation of the Hoser family carried their influence beyond Hoser’s Corner into public life, culture, and local politics. Harold Hoser married Marlene Juliette Kaplan in 1959 at the Margate Hebrew Congregation synagogue, and together they had three children: Mark, Perrina, and Tania.
Harold and Marlene Hoser walking on to the bimah of the Margate synagogue at their 1959 wedding.
Becky Hoser nee Stander married Sam Ridler under the chuppah by Rev Landau, in 1959.
Born in 1939 in Bournemouth, Hampshire, Marlene Hoser went on to become a well-known British actor under her stage name Juliette Kaplan. She worked widely across British television, appearing in dramas including Doctors, Brookside, EastEnders, and London’s Burning, as well as the 2003 film The Death of Klinghoffer. Her most famous role was as Pearl Sibshaw in the BBC comedy Last of the Summer Wine, which she played from 1985 until the series ended in 2010. Her sharp, no-nonsense portrayal made her a household name, and she later toured theatres nationwide in a one-woman show performing as Pearl. She also appeared in pantomime and played Agnes Tinker in Coronation Street in 2015.
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After Harold died in 1981, Marlene continued running Hoser’s Corner with her daughters before selling the site in the early 1980s. She then devoted herself fully to her acting career and also served as Deputy Mayoress of Margate during the same decade, alongside her stepfather-in-law, Sam Ridler, who acted as Mayor. Marlene died at her home in Westgate-on-Sea in 2019, aged 80, and is remembered for her warmth, humour, and enduring pride in her Jewish roots in Cliftonville.
Civic life was also shaped by Harold’s brother Cyril Hoser, the third of Jack and Becky Hoser’s five sons, born in East London in 1930. Cyril joined the RAF at 17 and served at nearby Manston. At 23, he married Greta Gold, and they had four children together. Later in life, he fathered two more children and spent his later years with his partner Daphne Chandler in Wingham. Entering politics in the 1960s and 1970s, Cyril served as a councillor on Thanet Council. His daughter, Maxine, named after his late brother Max, recalled that although he initially followed his father into Labour politics, he later joined the Conservative Party and successfully won a council seat again.
"Bingo Sam" Ridler and Marlene Hoser in 1973 at the Winter Gardens, celebrating Sam becoming mayor of Margate.
Harold and Marlene Hoser and friends outside Hosers Gift Shop Tea Gardens.
Known for his charisma and flair, Cyril became locally famous for his Rolls-Royce with a personalised number plate and for having Thanet streets named after his children. Outside politics, he loved tennis, swimming, and family trips to France and Israel in his Winnebago, which he saw as a way for his children to connect with their Jewish heritage. His later life included significant hardship, including financial difficulties during the property crash of the 1980s and two prison sentences, the first in 1983 for fraud and the second in 1999 for bootlegging. Despite this, Maxine remembered him as humorous, strong, and deeply caring, someone who “did a bad thing but did a lot of good things” and who genuinely cared about people.
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Cyril died in 2017, aged 88, after a long battle with Parkinson’s disease, having lived at Maurice House in Broadstairs since earlier that year. A service celebrating his life was held at Margate Cemetery that November. Between them, Marlene and Cyril carried the Hoser family’s influence far beyond a tea garden on the Cliftonville coastline.
Behind The Counter
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For Perrina Hoser, working at Hoser’s Corner was as much about people as it was about business. She remembered liking the customers and the buzz of the place, and it was enjoyable because people were in a holiday mood and “you got the best of everyone”. That atmosphere of warmth and informality shaped how Hoser’s Corner was experienced, both by those who worked there and by those who passed through.
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The Hosers were more than business owners, however. They were a multi-generational Jewish family network whose name became synonymous with Cliftonville’s civic life and seaside enterprise. Between the shop, the council chamber, and the synagogue, the Hosers were hard to miss in post-war Margate. Their connections extended to other well-known Jewish families, including the Graduses, Rubacks, and Schwartzmans, through business and synagogue life.
you got the best of everyone...
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Perrina Hoser
…we carried on running it after Dad died. Eve Humphrey was the manageress. I ran the big trailer café, did the buying and selling. It was thriving! Just a prefab really, but there were all the different things: jewellery, toys, glass blowing in the café. It was really lively then.
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Perrina Hoser
Hoser's Corner Grand Finale
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After Harold’s death, the family kept Hoser’s Corner going. Perrina Hoser recalled how they continued the business for several years, with Eve Humphreys as the manager, while she herself handled the buying and selling. Although it was “just a prefab”, the place was thriving, and she remembered it as “really lively” during those years. Over time, the site expanded in every direction. What had begun as a modest tea garden now included a sizeable café, and sections for glass-blowing, books, beachwear, jewellery, lilos and seaside toys, cigarettes, and a chemist. Down the middle ran the “dirty” counter, selling the kind of mildly risqué novelty items that were a familiar feature of many British seaside shops at the time, such as tip-and-strip pens that revealed cheeky images when turned upside down.
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Eventually, the business was sold, and today, the site of Hoser’s Corner on Ethelbert Crescent, beside Newgate Gap, is little more than a car park. Yet in memory, it remains vibrant, filled with the sounds of clinking teacups, chatter, and the scrape of chairs in the summer. For those who remember, Hoser’s Corner still evokes a time when Cliftonville was thriving and when the Hoser family’s name stood for enduring Jewish civic duty and enterprise on the Kentish coast.
© Katie Blythe 2026
Primary Sources & Further Reading​
Bailes, Kathy (2017), “Remembering former Thanet councillor Cyril Hoser.” The Isle of Thanet News, 17 December.
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“Juliette Kaplan” (n.d.), Wikipedia. Accessed 2025.
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Hoser, Perrina (2022), oral history interview. Cliftonville Voices Oral History Project and Exhibition. Unpublished interview recording and transcript.
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Hoser, Tania (2022), oral history interview. Cliftonville Voices Oral History Project and Exhibition. Unpublished interview recording and transcript.
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Ruback, Ernestine Lawrence (2022), oral history interview. Cliftonville Voices Oral History Project and Exhibition. Unpublished interview recording and transcript.