”A little farther along the peninsula is Prospect Cottage, the black-tarred shack where Derek Jarman retreated in his final years. Dying of AIDS, the director transformed the house into a text, covering the walls in books and paintings and poetry. John Donnie’s poem “The Sunne Rising” is inscribed on an outside all, hand-cut from marine plywood in Jarman’s own handwriting. ‘Busy old fool, unruly sun / Why dost thou this, / Through windows, and through curtains call on us?’ Peter Fillingham, the artist who installed it, says Jarman dreamed up each new improvement to the cottage during his long stays in hospital, and would call up his friends to share his plans. In this way, life was infused into the fabric of the building, even as its owner faded out. ‘Love, all alike, no season knows nor clime,’ reads the poem. ‘Nor hours, days, months, which are the rags of time.’
Best know is the garden that Jarman raised from the shingle around Prospect Cottage, sparsely decorated with the few plants that could survive the perpetual Dungeness winds, and with driftwood and rusted metal that washed up on the nearby beach. ‘People thought I was building a garden for magical purposes,’ he wrote. ‘I saw it as a therapy.’ But surely he could not deny that his garden came to feel like an act of witchcraft, to raise an oasis in such thin soil, to enchant a place to the extent he did. When I visited Prospect Cottage on a rare open day; not long after his death, the little house seeped peace from its very walls. That is no mean feat of transfiguration.” – Katherine May, Enchantment
This World of Interiors article paints a more detailed description of the landscape and Prospect Cottage, which is located in Kent. From the article is this from Derek Jarman (1942-1994).
“Apart from the gales and the constant winds, the climatic compensations are two weeks less frost than anywhere else, the least rainfall and the highest amount of sunshine. When I got here the house had been done up. Fitted carpets with dainty wallpaper on chipboard. The first thing that I did was to strip it all back to the original tongue and grooving. One or two of the wooden walls had been painted but some still had the original varnish – the dark rooms have their own charm. It was all stop and go, and after a while I gave up. I am one of those people who never finish a job; I will paint a room but there will always be a corner left out where the original colour still shows. I bought the cottage from the widow of the local publican. The pub is a wartime barracks that had been painted gooseturd green. I built the outside west wall myself, and tarvarnished the whole of the outside. All these houses were originally tar-varnished. I have tried to keep the cottage just as it was – the name Prospect and the yellow window frames included.”
Visiting prospect Cottage
Prospect Cottage is located at Dungeness Road, Dungeness, Romney Marsh TN29 9NE. The cottage is open for limited visits by the public and the garden is always open and tickets are not required for it. Pre-booked scheduled tickets are required to enter Prospect Cottage. Standard prices (2026) are £22. Kids under six go in free and must be carried or hold an adult’s hand the entire time. Each visit is 40 minutes and is accompanied by a guide. For photographers – photography and filming are not allowed inside Prospect Cottage.
There is also a residency program. Here are the past residencies at Prospect Cottage.
