Flying home to one of London’s airports from my end-of-year holidays, my plane was held above the neighboring county of Kent, my birthplace. As we banked to turn back up the River Thames, one of the last things I saw out of the window—I’m an ardent window-seat chooser—was a series of strange-looking square objects on triangulated stilts in the North Sea off the coast of Kent.
I have seen them before but paid little attention until a spate of recent news articles.
These are sea forts, coastal defenses created during World War II, and which may soon be turned into quirky, alternative and expensive accommodations.
And why not? The demand to stay in such places has never been higher. People are looking for something new to do, and tweet. “Glamping” in yurts; living the pastoral life in travelers’ caravans; pondering the past in converted Iron Age forts; sitting quietly and high up in converted lighthouses—the choices go on.
There’s even a website called QuirkyAccom.com, where you can peruse many of them.
Again this is a case of hotels being among the most sensible and sustainable opportunities to preserve buildings of national importance. Certainly few people would care about these isolated edifices if there was not a compelling reason to visit them, and I’d say peace, quiet, something different and a great bed, room, breakfast and experience would be high up any list.
Operation Redsand Forts is the organization behind the bold endeavor, and the Canterbury Times has explained the history of the sea forts, of which there are half a dozen or so groupings. For example, Redsand contains seven separate forts, all within eyeshot of one another.
The businessperson behind the scheme has enlisted bright creative types from a company called NextBigThing based in the hip Bermondsey area of South East London. Developers have proposed joining the seven forts by glass walkways, building 44 hotel rooms and zipping guests there via hovercraft or helicopter. Journeys in either would not take long. An architectural company already has gone to sea on the project.
There have been other uses for the forts since they were decommissioned in the 1950s, and no doubt other people are looking at other towers still now with ideas in mind. One is for an astronomical observatory. Radio stations have also been given permission to broadcast from them. One famous one—Sealand—even branded itself a “principality,” issued its own passports and postage stamps and wrote its own national anthem.
There once was a need for these strange objects. My grandparents often told me of the bombing raids during the Blitz and the Battle of London and how enemy aircraft would dump any remaining live ordnance out of their planes as soon as they turned around from London. That ordnance would fall on the Kentish towns lining the Thames, which during the enforced blackout was the only “illuminated path” to guide the pilots back to Germany. My mother’s home was destroyed in one of these raids but she and the rest of her family stayed safe in the underground bunkers.
Any development of these forts needs to be agreed to by The Crown Estate, the government body set up to maintain and cherish such buildings of national importance. In London, such go-aheads often lead to the general rent and rate increases that follow luxury development. But out there in the North Sea near the town of Whitstable—known for its oysters, seafood, fishing boats and shingle beach—that will be less of an issue.
It would definitely make a sound destination for a secured business meeting along the lines of when the G8 Summit was held in 2004 on Sea Island, Georgia.
If anyone knows of any data and statistics listing how much of such alternative accommodation exists, I’d be very interested to see it. Probably, in the United Kingdom at least, any success this niche receives would be at the expense of bed and breakfast-style accommodations, but who knows.
Email Terence Baker or find him on Twitter.
The opinions expressed in this column do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Hotel News Now or its parent company, STR and its affiliated companies. Bloggers published on this site are given the freedom to express views that may be controversial, but our goal is to provoke thought and constructive discussion within our reader community. Please feel free to comment or contact an editor with any questions or concerns.