Fed up with noisy neighbours? River Thames fort can be yours for just £500,000

B00Mer

B00Mer

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Fed up with noisy neighbours? Bombproof River Thames fort can be yours for just £500,000



Number One, The Thames, is also a bargain for city workers looking to beat the rush hour by travelling to work... on a speed boat

A fascinating former fort, known as Number 1 The Thames, has been put on the market for £500,000.
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If you hate your neighbours and have a spare £500,000 in your back pocket then the River Thames fort could be your new dream home.

This fascinating bombproof property was built in 1855 and can only be accessed by boat or a very muddy half-mile walk at low tide.

The quirky building, known as the Grain Tower Battery, is located off the Isle of Grain in Kent and is on sale for half a million pounds.

It is in need of complete restoration but is being billed as an ideal luxury home, casino or even a nightclub.

Nigel Day, director of Riverhomes, the agency listing the property, said: "It could be transformed into something really special - a stunning home, a hotel, a sanctuary or something to do with outdoor pursuits. There are so many possibilities."



A fascinating former fort, known as Number 1 The Thames, has been put on the market for £500,000.

The estate agent believes that it will cost at least one million pounds to redevelop the derelict fort and that any restorations will be subject to planning permission from English heritage.

Number One, The Thames originally had an enormous gun on the roof when it was built 150 years ago, and housed 60 soldiers during World War Two.

With a guide price of £500,000 the fortress is around three times the average price of a home sold in England and Wales last month.

But with London property prices rocketing, it's the same price as a developer paid for three garages in Wandsworth last month.

The stronghold may prove very popular. Estate agent, Nigel Day said: "We have had a fair amount of interest in it."

source: Fed up with noisy neighbours? Bombproof River Thames fort can be yours for just £500,000 - Mirror Online
 
Blackleaf

Blackleaf

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I would like to live there, were it not for the fact that it's located right near to the World War II wreck the SS Richard Montgomery, which is packed with 3,000 tons of explosives and which could explode at any moment. Their detonation would cause one of the biggest non-nuclear explosions ever — 700 times the size of the bomb which claimed 168 lives in Oklahoma City in 1995. According to experts,if the ship exploded it would cause the deaths of thousands of people in the immediate surroundings; a massive tsunami, which could kill many more people; and cause shock waves which would blow out windows as far away as East London, 30 miles upriver.

Michael Fellows, a former Royal Navy diver and an expert in submerged explosives, has since claimed that if the ammonium nitrate which was commonly added to TNT in wartime becomes dampened by sea-water, it could react explosively with the iron casings of these devices.
In 2004, he told New Scientist magazine that the Montgomery was ‘a ticking time-bomb’. The publication also identified another potentially lethal problem with the cargo.​

It includes 2,000 cases of cluster bombs, each one loaded ready for use, bar the removal of the pins which prevented their accidental detonation. ​

Even if those pins remain in place —and they may have been weakened or destroyed by corrosion by now — the New Scientist suggested that the cluster bombs might detonate by means other than those intended.

If water vapour gets into their fuses, it could start a chemical reaction, leading to the creation of copper azide, a material so volatile that it cannot be used as a commercial explosive. ​

The slightest knock and it could blow up, leading to a chain reaction which in theory could detonate the rest of the cargo, a possibility raised by the Government’s own scientists towards the end of the Sixties. ​

‘I consider that the risk of very sensitive azides being present in this ammunition is still real,’ wrote an official from the Explosives Research and Development Establishment (ERDE) in 1967. One catalyst for such an explosion might be the steady decay of the Montgomery. Every year, she is surveyed for the Maritime and Coastguard Agency (MCA) and, in 2009, the report revealed ‘slow but continued deterioration’ with one crack in the hull increasing by 20 inches in a single year. Even if such changes do not cause the munitions inside the Montgomery to shift and explode spontaneously, there is the threat that she will be targeted by terrorists, or hit by a huge vessel straying from the busy shipping lanes only 200 yards from her resting place.​

WWII still presents a huge hazard to the people of this part of East London 69 years after it has ended.

So I ain't living there.​





Masts of the SS Richard Montgomery protrude above the Thames water line to serve as a constant reminder to the people of Sheerness-on-Sea
 
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