Maunsell Forts

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Maunsell Sea Forts
Thames and Mersey estuaries
"Navy" style fort
"Army" style fort
Type	Fortified towers
Height	Approx 30–78 ft (9.1–23.8 m)
Site information
Owner	United Kingdom,  Sealand (claim unrecognized)
Open to the public	Yes, in some cases
Condition	Decommissioned in the late 1950s
Site history
Built	1942–1943
In use	Second World War
Materials	Concrete, metals
Events	Used during Second World War

The Maunsell Forts are towers built in the Thames and Mersey estuaries during the Second World War to help defend the United Kingdom. They were operated as army and navy forts, and named for their designer, Guy Maunsell.^[1] The forts were decommissioned during the late 1950s and later used for other activities including pirate radio broadcasting. One of the forts is managed by the unrecognised Principality of Sealand;^[2] boats visit the remaining forts occasionally, and a consortium named Project Redsands is planning to conserve the fort situated at Red Sands. The aesthetic attraction of the Maunsell forts has been considered to be associated with the aesthetics of decay, transience and nostalgia.^[3]

During the summers of 2007 and 2008 Red Sands Radio, a station commemorating the pirate radio stations of the 1960s, operated from the Red Sands fort on 28-day Restricted Service Licences. The fort was subsequently declared unsafe, and Red Sands Radio has moved its operations ashore to Whitstable.

Forts had been built in river mouths and similar locations to defend against ships, such as the Grain Tower Battery at the mouth of the Medway dating from 1855, Plymouth Breakwater Fort, completed 1865, the four Spithead Forts: Horse Sand Fort, No Mans Land and St Helens Forts which were built 1865–1880 and Spitbank Fort, built during the 1880s, the Humber Forts on Bull & Haile Sands, completed in late 1919, and the Nab Tower, intended as part of a World War I anti-submarine defense but only set in place in 1920.