On paper, Natasha McNamara’s London life was enviable.
A glamorous job as a magazine editor, a house in east London, a beautiful family, and a busy social life.
And for a long time Natasha and her husband Mark Sandford were happy living in their four bedroom Victorian house in Hackney Central with daughters Lily, 18, Bluebelle, 13, and Juno, ten.
It was the experience of lockdown which hit their reset button.
Spending more time at home made them realise how skewed their work life balance had become.
“We were both working really hard in a quite high octane industry, we always had nannies for the kids, and it was hard to strike a balance,” said Natasha, 50.
“We were earning good money but it came at a significant cost to the children,” she added.
“Lockdown fast tracked a latent desire to make a change. Would we have moved if it hadn’t happened? I don’t think so.”
Several of Natasha and Mark’s friends had already made the move to the Kent coast and they decided to follow suit.
In February 2021 they sold their London house for £1.2 million and bought a dated and slightly dilapidated five bedroom Victorian house close to the sea for a third of the price — £380,000.
The girls, bribed with the promise of a dog, were agreeable about moving, and have settled in well by the sea.
Natasha spent the first year in Ramsgate making the daily hour and a quarter commute back to London, but has now set up her own business, Just Hotter, a one stop shop for women going through the menopause.
Mark, 43, previously commercial director for a media company now does consulting work and has co-founded a men’s online magazine, The Book of Man.
They have also started work on renovating the house, revamping the ground floor into a kitchen/living space and landscaping the garden.
The rest of the property will be done as and when they have the time and money.
In her spare time Natasha has found it surprisingly easy to make friends.
“There is a very tight community here of DFLs, which is what they call people who have moved down from London,” she said. “That was instant. I have also made friends with locals through the schools, so it is a nice mix.”
The only thing Natasha misses about London is Hackney’s Vietnamese restaurants.
“We used to live near Homerton Hospital so there were a lot of sirens all the time,” she said. “In Ramsgate we have seagulls, and the sound of the sea.”
