 |
| Spitbank Fort off Portsmouth |
The sun is shining as our small boat heads out from Portsmouth harbour on England’s south coast and Mike Clare is beaming with excitement. An entrepreneur who sold his last business for a reported £230m, he is now on a mission to buy up the most interesting properties in Britain – castles, lighthouses, stately homes – then restore them and rent them out for holidays, weddings and corporate events.
Since his spending spree began a year ago, he has spent £24m on nine properties, ranging from a castle in the north of Scotland to a thatched manor house on the south Devon coast, but looming on the horizon ahead is his most audacious purchase so far, Spitbank Fort.
“It’s only the fifth time I’ve visited so I still find it absolutely thrilling,” he says, before filling me in on its history. Spitbank was built a mile off-shore between 1861 and 1878, one of four forts designed to protect Portsmouth harbour against possible attack by the French. In fact, they were never used in anger and became known as “Palmerston’s follies”, after the prime minister of the day who had backed the ruinously expensive plan.
New guns were added during the second world war, and 35 soldiers were stationed there, but again the fort saw no real action and was finally sold off by the Ministry of Defence in 1982. Spells as a museum and party venue followed, before it was put up for auction last November, with a guide price of £700,000. Clare, who at the time was at sea on the World, a private residential cruise ship, stepped in the day before the auction and bought it, sight-unseen, for £1m.
Less than 30 minutes since setting sail, our boat – filled with architects, designers and contractors – closes in on Spitbank and makes two circuits of its imposing walls, checking the condition of the granite blocks and the iron armour-plating. Then a cable is lowered from a crane, and the entire boat is winched up out of the water and raised 20ft to the docking platform. Sailors on passing yachts crane their necks to try to see what’s going on, and by now I can’t help but share Clare’s excitement. I’ve come to check out the redevelopment of a holiday property, but it feels more like a covert military exercise.
Inside, the architects spread their plans on a long table beneath a beautiful vaulted brick ceiling, while Clare takes me for a spin around. It’s immediately clear that when complete, this will be Britain’s most unusual luxury holiday retreat. On the roof are two second world war anti-aircraft gun emplacements; the guns themselves long gone, leaving what look like stone bowls 10ft wide. One will be turned into a Jacuzzi with stunning views over the Solent (probably the world’s only hot tub with adjacent ammunition hoist), the other into a circular fireside seating area, where you can watch the stars with your digestif. Two more gun platforms will become sun-bathing decks, while the raised lighthouse building will be turned into a honeymoon suite.
Inside, Clare darts around with huge energy and attention to detail, pausing to check on the whereabouts of particular artefacts, assessing the condition of the stonework, and stopping to fool around with a giant Victorian meat cleaver left hanging in the old pantry. “I can’t think of anything more enjoyable,” he confesses. “I don’t really play golf – doing this is like my hobby.”
The rooms are arranged around a circular courtyard with lots of seating space and a freshwater well. The top floor, which originally housed the 19th-century artillery, will be largely filled with eight double bedrooms, each with a gun port for a window. With walls up to 14ft thick, peace should be guaranteed. On the lower floor, the smaller rooms will become a gym, wine cellar, cigar room and so on. Like all the properties in Clare’s Amazing Retreats portfolio, it will only be possible to hire the whole fort, rather than individual bedrooms, at rates of around £25,000 a week.
Though its huge potential is evident, the conversion will be an immense job. The fort is a Scheduled Ancient Monument, meaning all alterations must be approved by English Heritage, a government quango. Assuming it wins approval, building work is due to start in September and be completed by spring, at a cost of £1.5m. To my untrained eye that seems quite an optimistic estimate but Clare, 55, has deep pockets.
Starting in 1985 with one shop in Uxbridge selling sofa beds, he built Dreams, a chain of more than 200 bedding stores, which was sold to private equity investors for a reported £230m in 2008. At the same time, recession struck and interest rates fell to 0.5 per cent, so putting his cash in the bank “and living the life of Riley” was not an option. “Rather than putting my money in hedge funds and things in the City that I don’t understand, I thought I’d invest in something I enjoy, buying really unusual buildings and doing them up.”
It wasn’t a totally frivolous investment – slumping prices made it a sensible time to move into property. The hope was that, after redevelopment, the properties would come back on to the rental market just as the recession eased.
In all, Clare plans to spend £50m on 20 properties, so he and his wife Carol currently spend much of their time touring the country looking for property. “It’s proper Playboy stuff! You land the helicopter in a couple of places, say, ‘We’ll buy that – no, we won’t buy that.’ It’s great fun, though of course we are trying to do it in a business-like way too. Hopefully, because we don’t have to wait for approval from a monthly board meeting or for a bank to approve a mortgage, we can move quickly and get some good prices.”
To date, highlights of the portfolio include the 15th-century Ackergill Tower, a castle in Caithness and Beaucastle, an arts and crafts mansion near Bewdley, Worcestershire. Next on the shopping list is Stanbrook Abbey, a Pugin-designed monastery near Worcester, which Amazing Retreats hopes to market particularly for weddings and conferences, while ships, windmills, lighthouses and even a Devon mine have all been considered.
“The danger for us is that we look at houses that are too average, thinking they will make some good short-term income. We want to be known as the company to go to for the unusual and amazing. But I think the mine was probably a bit too mad.”
