The British Listed Buildings site has photos of the fort and boat approach with stairs, picking crane, and sloped ladder lift for getting loads from water to gate.
Things like this fort make me convinced that automated electric drone taxis could open up a lot of living possibilities. Get one of those and you could turn it into an amazing Airbnb or alternatively a community.
And maintenance and running costs are probably higher than a regular house.
If you want to get away from it all there are cheaper alternatives.
And if you are not afraid of maintenance cost, there are also better alternatives, such as a small castle or a farm, closer to where other people live.
I think the entire point of something like this is to be further from where other people live.
There are times of the year that access is not possible at all due to weather which does limit the usefulness of the location.
The Angle lifeboat isn’t far away in an emergency though, so that’s helpful.
There are other Victorian fort locations in that area in private hands. A different school friend owned more than one of these for a while. Maintenance costs are outrageous!
I feel like this heavily defeats the point of owning your own island. Every other private island I've seen on Wikipedia looks like some kind of paradisiac resort. With beaches, greenery, confy gazebos etc..
bell-cot•2h ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorne_Island
https://britishlistedbuildings.co.uk/300017169-thorne-island...
Try not to imagine the upkeep costs on the historic-listed 2 acres that you paid $4M for - which are only accessible by helicopter, or by risk-tolerant boat (Wikipedia notes a dozen wrecks in the immediate vicinity) and lots of stairs.
neom•40m ago