Two trips to this forgotten shell, which was once a heavily armed sea fort, provide me with footage of the tower, path and surrounds – see video below.
Built during the Napoleonic War to fend off a perceived naval threat from France, the structure is now a vertiginous mishmash of old and new materials, battered together to form a sagging, skeletal ruin at the end of crumbling tidal path.
While the military presence has been disbanded for decades, the local population are apparently still highly pugilistic; upon my first visit I observed some Hoo residents angrily chasing off a family of Chinese crab-catchers.
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