MVC :: Rendering Area Partial View From External Dll

I am quite new to MVC and am gradually overcoming all my 'but WebForms can do that' issues but I still have one. I wish to have components which I can deploy into an Area in order to keep things nice and tidy. This area will have a bunch of re-usable partial views like this. MyArea/Views/Shared/MyAreaControl.ascx I can render this MyAreaControl partial view fine in other Views inside that area but it fails when I try to render it from a not inside the area (e.g. view in the root of the site). I am essentially using this syntax

<% Html.RenderPartial("MyAreaControl", new { area = "MyArea" }); %>

which seems to only look for this partial view inside the root Views folder, not the area one despite me specifying the area. Is this a restriction of the system, a bug - or am I just doing it wrong. ADDENDUM: Turns out it appears to be an assembly issue. My controller is found in a separate assembly from my MVC Application. Doing a bit of fiddling with moving my control inside and outside of the area and the separate dll I came to the following confusion:

- If partial view is in its own area and the controller is part of the MVC application dll - I can render it from my home view
- If partial view is not in its own area and the controller is part of an external dll I can render it from my home view
- If partial view is not in its own area and the controller is part of the MVC application dll - I can render it from my home view
- If partial view is in its own area and the controller is part of an external dll I CANNOT render it from my home view

The controller for path '/' was not found or does not implement IController.