Dungeness, Kent.

Dungeness is a flat, eerie and wild edgeland nestled at the tip of southern Kent.

Through a camera you can frame a jumble of pylons, low buildings, a lighthouse and a power station. Small innocuous homes sit like compact, self sufficient huts out of season.

One of the few black cottages has thick yellow window frames and a borderless garden belonging to the artist and film maker Derek Jarmen, now kept and overseen by his partner. 

The shingle merges with the garden, without a border to speak of. The garden and the landscape beyond it casts a spell which was difficult to articulate, something about it being both bleak and beautiful. How do plants and animals survive at the edge of this otherworldly lunar-esque dimension? The wilderness of the place helped it become an SSSI, a site of special scientific interest. The only boundaries seem to be the few roads.

At the time of our visit I got out the car and marvelled at the distant horizon, where large ships could be spotted and in the foreground, weather battered boats lay up on shingle. A large rusted tank rests along with other skeletal detritus. Walking in the distance, a visitor, with their partner trailing behind. 

Nearby Jarman's cottage I stood on a pathway to photograph a defunkt BT booth that seemed at odds within the strange landscape. Crossing back over the road to capture more detail in the low scrub I heard a shout, "S'cuse me!".  I only turned when the bloke's voice came again, this time more gritty and annoyed. 

A man appeared in a wooly bobble hat, arms bellowing like Biffa Bacon's, "S'cuse me! You wouldn't like it if I came and walked all over your garden, would you? No! Well, don't do it on mine! " He huffed and turned quickly off, ignoring the apologies. He was right to moan, I hadn't been bothered to ask - mainly because it looked like nobody lived there. Looking at the photo I realise I ignored the situation completely since a bag of spilt stones on the same path indicated if there was an owner, they wouldn't be the type to get worked up. How wrong.