Lighthouse For Sale; Squatter Included
By Sue Clark on Mar 14, 2008 in The Light Side 
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A recent story out of the UK caught my eye. I know a lot of people would want to buy a lighthouse, but would you still want it if it came with its very own squatter? Well, that’s what’s going on with the No Man’s Land (Solent) Fort near Portsmouth, on the English Channel. Mr. Harmesh Pooni has barricaded himself in the fort’s lighthouse and refuses to let anyone on the man-made island, including the creditors who want to repossess it.
The fort was built between 1861 and 1880 to house 80 soldiers to fend off an attack by the French army. It involved a huge engineering effort to cut vast blocks of granite and transport them by barge to the building site, before they were lowered onto the sea bed for its foundations. It was built complete with lighthouse and emplacements for 49 cannon. It was decommissioned in 1957. It was featured in a movie, the 1971 Dr Who adventure called The Sea Devils starring Jon Pertwee.
It was sold to Mr. Pooni and his investors, Lexi Holdings, in 2004, and was used as a luxurious rental, for which he was getting £25,000 per day from corporations. Unfortunately, Mr. Pooni contracted Legionnaire’s Disease from contaminated well water, and the rental business went away due to quarantine. And now Lexi Holdings is trying to sell it, but Mr. Pooni has barricaded himself in the lighthouse tower and won’t leave. From the story on Daily News and Analyses:
“The fort is mine and no one else has the right to sell it,” said Pooni, father of four. To prevent its sale, Pooni now lives alone in the fort’s lighthouse surviving on rations topped up by occasional visits to the mainland. “It is very spooky at night. I just sit up in the lighthouse and look at all the lights on the shoreline and hope that the legal situation is resolved in my favour,” he adds.
“Even if they get an order to evict me. I shall carry on fighting in the courts. No one is going to want to buy it with the thought it might not legally be theirs,” says a hopeful Pooni. KPMG, Lexi’s administrators have taken Pooni to Portsmouth County Court seeking his eviction from the fort, but a judge has so far refused to give it. The case will now go to the High Court.
That man is one dedicated lighthouse lover, I must say. 
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