Buy a Fort

[Image: Screengrab via the BBC].

A maritime fort constructed in the 1860s in the middle of the Thames Estuary is on the market for half a million pounds, or roughly $835,000.

[Image: Screengrab via the BBC].

With its fifteen-foot thick walls and insanely daunting approach—accessible on foot only at low tide and, even then, after a squelching walk across seemingly endless mudflats—it's certainly a good option if you're looking for solitude. Here it is on Google Maps.

[Images: Screengrabs via the BBC].

At first glance, it's an amazing offshore castle, a fairy tale artificial island of 19th-century military Romanticism roughly an hour's boat ride east of London.

[Images: Screengrabs via the BBC].

But don't jump in too quickly, lest you overlook the ruinous state of the place: it needs almost literally everything, from plumbing to electricity, glass windows to the most thorough cleaning you could imagine, having been open to the oceanic elements for decades.

[Image: Screengrab via the BBC].

The BBC has a video of the place, complete with a muddy walk-through and shots at both low and high tide.

[Images: Screengrabs via the BBC].

All negatives aside, though, this looks awesome; convince your billionaire best friend to buy it and we'll turn it into an offshore architecture school with an elective minor in the design of fortified micronations, complete with a bizarre summer school featuring boat-borne reenactments of famous sea battles throughout history...

(Spotted via @subbrit. Previously on BLDGBLOG: Buy a Lighthouse, Buy an Underground Kingdom, Buy a Prison, Buy a Tube Station, Buy an Archipelago, Buy a Map, Buy a Torpedo-Testing Facility, Buy a Silk Mill, Buy a Fort, Buy a Church).