Creatively Converted Sea Forts of Great Britain

Strange Adaptive Reuse of Military Architecture

clipped from weburbanist.com Ocean and sea forts are few and far between and with good reason: only in fairly extreme circumstances is their expense deemed justifiable. Since being decommissioned, many of these have gained strange second lives as everything from luxury resorts and private retreats to micronations and pirate radio stations. Guy Maunsell is responsible for an amazing series of WWII army and navy sea forts, many of which still stand today. Maunsell’s army sea forts were more specifically designed to repel smaller aircraft flying in to attack rather than to lay mines at site. Horse Sands, Spitbank, St. Helens and No Man’s Land Forts were created in the mid-1800s as defensive sea forts around Portsmouth. The Nab Tower, now a lighthouse, was created in 1918 near Southampton in order to protect merchant vessels from attacks by German submarines. At 40 feet wide, 90 feet tall and a cost of over a million dollars a piece eight such towers were to be created and linked with steel nets to keep out U-boats.