What to See in Romney Marsh - Top Sights and Attractions

Historical landmark in Dungeness, England. Prospect Cottage is a house on the coast in Dungeness, Kent. Originally a Victorian fisherman's hut, the house was purchased by director and artist Derek Jarman in 1987, and was his home until his death in 1994.

Jarman bought the house following the death of his father, at a time when he was looking to leave London. Actress and friend Tilda Swinton recalls Jarman buying "gallons of pitch black paint" to redecorate. The cottage facade of tarred boards and bright yellow paintwork were maintained from the previous owners. The timber walls of the cottage are weatherproofed with tar, and one wall is decorated with lines from the John Donne poem "The Sun Rising". Jarman's 1990 film The Garden was filmed at the house.

Jarman cultivated a garden in the shingle surrounding the cottage, a mixture of sculptures assembled from driftwood and other flotsam from the beaches of Dungeness, and hardy plants which could survive the coastal weather, supported by manure from a local farm dug into small holes in the shingle. Writing of his early months at Prospect Cottage, he said that initially "people thought I was building a garden for magical purposes - a white witch out to get the nuclear power station". Jarman described his garden as "a therapy and a pharmacopoeia", and would go on to write a book about it, Derek Jarman's Garden, illustrated with photographs by Howard Sooley and published posthumously in June 1995. A set of prints of the photographs was acquired by the Garden Museum for its collection in 2012.

The gardeners Beth Chatto and Christopher Lloyd stumbled across Prospect Cottage and its garden in the summer of 1990; the garden became the inspiration for the Gravel Garden at Beth Chatto Gardens at Elmstead Market in Essex.

After Jarman's death in 1994, the cottage was bequeathed to his partner Keith Collins. The house was put up for sale in 2018 after Collins' death, its interior still containing artwork by Jarman's friends and admirers, including Maggi Hambling, John Maybury, Gus Van Sant and Richard Hamilton.

With the possibility of the house being sold privately, Art Fund launched a campaign in January 2020 to raise money for "a permanently funded programme to conserve and maintain the building, its contents and its garden for the future". The appeal was featured on an episode of BBC1's Countryfile in February 2020, with rare filming inside the cottage allowed for the programme. As part of the fundraising efforts, costume designer Sandy Powell, a friend of Jarman's, collected film stars' signatures on her white suit at the 2020 BAFTAs award show and 2020 Oscars ceremony, with the suit auctioned online between 4 and 11 March by Phillips auction house, London. and selling for £16,000.

The cottage and its garden were the subject of an exhibition at the Garden Museum in London in 2020.^[1]

The Rhee Wall is a former watercourse in Romney Marsh in Kent. It is 7.5 miles long and runs from Appledore, on the north-western edge of Romney Marsh, south-east through Snargate, Brenzett and Old Romney, to New Romney near the coast. The Rhee Wall forms a boundary between Romney Marsh proper, to the north-east, and Walland Marsh to the south-west.

It consists of two parallel earth banks, from 50 to 100 metres apart, the ground between being raised above the marsh on either side.

It was built in the 13th century: a watercourse was constructed from Appledore to Old Romney, which was extended in 1258 to New Romney. The purpose was to wash away silt from the harbour at New Romney; there were sluices to control the flow at Appledore, Snargate and New Romney. However, the silt at New Romney continued to accumulate. After the South England flood of February 1287, the harbour at New Romney was completely blocked, and the River Rother, which had flowed into the sea here, was diverted away. The Rhee Wall has not contained water since medieval times.

It has since been used as a dry causeway above the marsh. In the present day, the B2080 road follows the route of the Rhee Wall from Appledore south-east to Brenzett; the route continues south-east to New Romney as part of the A259 road.^[3]

Dungeness, Romney Marsh and Rye Bay is a 10,172.9-hectare biological and geological Site of Special Scientific Interest which stretches from New Romney in Kent to Winchelsea in East Sussex. An area of 5,129.5 hectares is a Special Protection Area, an area of 3,141.1 hectares is a Special Area of Conservation, and an area of 6,377.6 hectares is a Ramsar Site, a wetland site designated of international importance under the Ramsar Convention. Part of the site is in the High Weald Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, parts are Geological Conservation Review sites, part is a Local Nature Reserve, and part is a Royal Society for the Protection of Birds nature reserve, and part is a National Nature Reserve.

Nationally important habitats in this site are saltmarsh, sand dunes, vegetated shingle, saline lagoons, standing waters, lowland ditch systems, and basin fens, and it has many rare and endangered species of fauna and flora. It is geologically important as its deposits display the chronology of coastal evolution.^[4]