Having sailed past these huge isolated sea-forts several times, I’d always been envious of the mysterious structures filled, I was sure, with people having the time of their lives. Dark domes built as defence during the Napoleonic War, they sit alone in the Solent, one mile from Portsmouth and one and a half miles from the Isle of Wight. A major shipping lane for passenger, freight and military vessels, the Solent is also a sailor’s playground—home to Cowes Week, it’s Disneyland for yachtsman and motorboats.
Built under Lord Palmerston and designed by Captain E. H. Stewart, construction on four sea forts began in 1865. The forts continued to be used and upgraded until the First World War, although by the time they were actually finished the war was over and none was ever used for the purpose originally intended. They became known as Palmerston’s Follies, a name that has stuck even though they were manned during WW1 and WW2.
Now owned by entrepreneur Mike Clare (the man behind Dreams bed shops), our hotel, No Man’s Fort, has 23 large bedroom suites, seven function rooms for up to 200 guests, a cabaret bar, games room, Officer’s Mess dining hall, domed atrium, lighthouse, Laser Battle area, sauna and spa treatments, rooftop hot tubs, and hot house & fire pit.
In high spirits, we arrived at Portsmouth harbour and headed to the ‘private departure lounge’, all ready to be ushered to a speedboat and whisked off to our remote hideaway. The ‘departure lounge’ consisted of a bolshie lady in an office-cum-souvenir-shop who instructed us to use the loo in a nearby pub before making our way toward a crowded pier.
A startlingly ordinary crowd awaited, retired school teachers, suburban goths, and the Velcro shoe brigade. For most of the mile-long journey on a concrete-decked people carrier I believed we’d been misdirected to the wrong boat. Marketing itself as a ‘luxury hotel’ and charging upwards of £550 a night, this isn’t a cheap Travelodge that does what it says on the tin, and we hadn’t realised the fort also offers ‘experiences’ such as afternoon tea, which may be its main pull.
The ferry felt… flammable. Fleece and yellow polyester scrunched in together like sardines, until the boat stopped and no one knew whether to get off or not. It became apparent that staff as confused as us were supposed to disembark passengers en route for the smaller sister hotel Spitbank Fort.
Upon arrival at No Man’s Fort we were met with a corporate drinks reception, a man with a microphone, and an obligatory group tour. Reminiscent of the safety spiel on a plane, it felt tired and rehearsed. We were offered pre-poured prosecco, no water, and no one took individual orders. We didn’t feel welcome to order from the bar or even use the bathroom while we were left in a boiling hot glass-roofed atrium for over 30 minutes.
Another 30 minutes later things got worse—a lot worse. It became apparent that Microphone Man required us all to traipse after him, up and down stairs for a good additional 30 minutes as he harped on about laser quest options for large groups, and the details of each additional games room’s pool table.
Is it a hotel, is it a museum? Either way it’s not well curated. Microphone Man ignored the really interesting basement rooms with soldiers’ personal effects laid out in situ, in order to bang on about the darts board in the very underwhelming lounge. I really wish I could be more positive, but being herded around in the heat with a group of pensioners and goths for getting on for an hour was the beginning of the end. By the end of the tour we’d lost the will to live.
We wondered whether the obligatory shoo around was actually a health and safety requirement dressed up as a tour, but normally when you arrive you go straight to your quarters, freshen up, and possibly explore at leisure. This exhaustive and exhausting non-optional tour felt like a bad school trip. It’s also possible the tour was a ploy to buy time while bags were delivered, but it seems an unnecessary length to go to for a delay most guests would find quite understandable.
The hotel was reminiscent of a sixth form common room. The place was lined with busy, patterned carpet, filthy in places and twee, knackered objéts littered every surface. The décor was gimmicky and themed like a nautical Hard Rock Café, while the lunch area was trying, I think, to resemble a sort of cartoon Parisian street café. A tired, mismatched Parisian cafe with vast washed-out photos of the fort affixed, probably in the 90s, to safety-glass windows.
There were tacky motivational phrases mounted on chip-board. Personal favourites include ‘if you don’t climb the mountain you can’t see the view’ and ‘we are all made of stars and we deserve to twinkle’. Another honourable mention goes out to ‘warning, this area has not been checked for zombies’.
I’d prefer not to be bossed on the loo by instructional art. A cheap poster in our bathroom demanded, amongst other things, that I ‘relax’, ‘lie in’ and ‘make memories’. Indeed.
No Man’s Fort felt literally that, nobody’s. Soulless, with no cohesive sense of style. It’s aimed at corporate away days—white boards with marker pens were dotted about—which potentially makes my criticism unjust; it might actually make an incredible place to while away a few hours laser-shooting colleagues you hate. But the fort doesn’t make its single USP adequately clear in their literature nor on their website.
Boards with timings for everything from meals, to when one should take hot chocolate, made the experience as regimented as the Navy for which the fort was originally intended. Reminiscent of boarding school, or, prison, if you value your liberty and wouldn’t willingly describe yourself as a ‘team player’, then No Man’s Fort probably isn’t for you.
Horrifyingly, the fort offers neither room service nor restaurants outside of designated meal times. There was a single lunch option, open for a set window of time, so once onboard we were obliged to take the lunch buffet at £15pp, where, having emailed ahead of time letting them know I’m allergic to mushrooms, the only hot item not containing mushroom was… plain rice.
There were signs telling us not to drink tap water and to call reception for bottles, but we had to call at least four times before someone answered, which raises the question of what would happen if someone fell ill. In fact, during the tour an older woman, lagging behind presumably more out of necessity than boredom, tripped on a step and fell. Unable to get up for several minutes, and with no staff around to help, a poor lad on his trial shift had to step in as the rest of the party was now several rooms away.
To be fair to Microphone Man, the poor guy seemed to be doing everything, from answering the phone, to bringing water, to patrolling at night. The whole place just felt alarmingly understaffed. If Michael O’Leary made sea hotels… You see where I’m going.
Our room itself was a high-point, dated, but huge and comfortable with a separate sitting room, and old National Geographic books dotted about. There was a great (Dreams?) bed, a freestanding tub on a raised platform, and a large separate bathroom with double basins and glass-walled shower. But alas, cheap, unpleasant toiletries reconfirmed the impression that the place doesn’t quite know what it’s doing. The lack of room service or minibar somewhere so deserted is, frankly, terrifying. On somewhere this remote one gets a certain panic when meals are only served at specific times, there isn’t room service, AC, or properly opening windows for our very warm room.
There was also only one option for supper, served by a stroppy teenage waitress in Gallery Mess—a sad fluorescent-lit dungeon-cum-dining-room next to reception. To be fair to the charismatic Cockney Chef, the roast rump of Dorset Hampshire lamb was fantastic, the Vichyssoise soup decent, but the margaritas hugely tart. And I don’t have a sweet tooth.
There were some positives—the location is amazing, and watching the sunset roll down from one of the two rooftop hot tubs was incredibly special. We could see the Isle of Wight, England, several small yachts, fishing boats and cargo ships bobbing – as if to remind us we weren’t actually captives – far on the horizon.
Stalking the corridors late at night really opened our eyes to just how much could be made of this place. In the right hands it could be amazing, truly amazing. It could be redesigned as a modern day Bond lair and marketed to a far more exclusive clientele.
But as it stands, so much potential, so poorly executed.
