To the Lighthouse: A Pair of Sheltered Cottages at Dungeness

Dungeness, on England’s south coast, is an nearly not possible concept, the sort of place that might solely be concocted by the British. Though it’s a fascinating vacation spot, with the likes of Ed Sheeran shopping for property right here, it’s not “posh” precisely. A lot of the homes are transformed railway carriages or fisherman’s cottages—like filmmaker Derek Jarman’s Prospect Cottage, tarred in black with shiny yellow home windows, simply because it was when he discovered it within the Eighties (and paid £750 for it). The attraction of Dungeness is partly as a consequence of the truth that the entire property is privately owned, with strict guidelines about buildings and fences, with all of it comprising a nationwide nature reserve. However the issues that ought to work towards it, excessive wind, desert solar, pebbles for miles, and even a Nineteen Sixties nuclear energy station, are the issues that win you over.

Inventive thinkers have completed effectively right here: Derek Jarman made a backyard regardless of the chances, and the artist and author Martin Turner, who purchased the Spherical Home at public sale within the early ’90s, made a snug dwelling out of a constructing that was fully spherical, and missing in electrical energy or water. He was delighted to have the house after residing in Hackney, London, and what he lacked in funds he made up for with onerous work, and fabulous style. His daughter, Kathryn Morris, continues his legacy and has not too long ago refurbished the 2 lighthouse keeper’s cottages, each of which at the moment are out there as vacation lets. We stayed in one in every of them:

Pictures by Caitlin Atkinson for Remodelista.

There have been many shipwrecks round Dungeness, the place the waters of the North Sea and the Channel merge, close to a promontory of ever-increasing shingle (pebbles). Dungeness Previous Lighthouse, overlooking the cottages and the Spherical Home, went out of fee in 1960 when the close by nuclear energy station was constructed (which is now being decommissioned itself). It’s open throughout faculty holidays and weekends, and is price climbing the 169 steps for a view over the peculiar republic that’s Dungeness.