From Beach Haven turn left out of Links Way, head towards Lydd, then Dungeness and in 10 minutes (driving) you’ll find yourself in a place that is as bleak as it is beautiful. The eerie charm of the area hits you as soon as your eyes focus on the abandoned rusty bits of machinery dotted about on the shingle alongside collapsed fishermen’s sheds and boats parked on the beach. The distant hum of the nuclear power station adds to the strangeness.
About a minute after, on the right, you’ll find a neat little black clapperboard house with yellow windows. Prospect Cottage and its unique garden has been photographed so many times it is quite famous. Primarily this is because it was the home of late film maker Derek Jarman.
Whilst on a trip to taste ‘the best fish and chips in England’ at the Pilot in 1986, Jarman and Tilda Swinton spotted the cottage for sale for £750. He bought it and started to turn the shingle surrounding his home into a sculptural magpies nest. Every day Jarman would prowl the beach gathering rusty detritus that for him had a beauty of it’s own, or redundant utilitarian objects like tools and rubber gloves. A unique visually inspiring environment came into being where nature and the man made combined.
However it is the planting that is his real achievement here. During summer months it I hard to imagine how he managed to grow such vibrant, colourful plants in Britain’s only official desert. Dungeness is actually home to 600 different plant species though you won’t find many of them in a garden centre. These are the outsiders of the plant world; sea kale, gorse, burnet roses and Blackthorn. Unlike nearby Romney, Dungeness residents are only permitted to grow indigenous plants and you’re not permitted to pick anything either.
To highlight the importance of Derek Jarman, Film London launched the Jarman Award four years ago for “artists working with the moving image and whose work resists conventional definition, encompassing innovation and excellence” . The winner will be announced in October.
