By BILL MOULAND

Last updated at 00:26 07 March 2008

Priced at £4million, No Man's Land Fort is surrounded by sea and features a swimming pool, sauna, gym, tennis court, bars and a stunning central atrium.

What the estate agents fail to mention in their particulars is Mr Harmesh Pooni.

The 42-year-old businessman claims he still owns the spectacular property built by the Victorians in the Solent between Portsmouth and the Isle of Wight.

Scroll down for more ...

Legal row: Harmesh Pooni has barricaded himself inside the £4m Victorian fort which stands in the Solent between Portsmouth and the Isle of Wight

And to deter any would-be buyers, he has set up residence in solitary splendour.

Taking his life in one hand and the only set of keys in the other, he jumped from a small boat to climb the rusty ladder to the Grade II-listed pile.

Then he pasted notices on all the windows - formerly gun turrets - warning that he is the owner and that trespassers face prosecution.

He is living in the fort's old lighthouse, surviving on rations topped up by occasional visits to the mainland.

"The fort is mine and no one else has the right to sell it," he says.

Scroll down for more ...

Barricade: Mr Pooni is preventing anyone else from landing on the fortress which has stood there for 138 years

"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 that it might not be legally theirs hanging over them."

The fort took 22 years to build, was completed in 1870 and was originally garrisoned by troops wrongly expecting to see the French navy come sailing over the horizon.

Later, it was used to string a submarine net across the Solent, while in the Second World War antiaircraft crews were based there trying to bring down German flying bombs.

It was put up for sale by the Ministry of Defence in 1963, and a series of entrepreneurs tried to turn it into a money-spinning venture.

It was already a hotel when Mr Pooni, a property developer from Birmingham, bought it for £6million in 2004.

Scroll down for more ...

The glass-roomed atrium which estate agents boast offers amazing 360-degree views

With a permanent staff of four and others brought in by boat for special occasions, he rented it out - at £25,000 a day - to corporate clients and events companies and won planning permission to build a £2million marina.

But then disaster struck. He contracted legionnaires' disease when the water in the fort's natural well became contaminated.

The business was shut down and then his backers, Lexi Holdings, went bust owing £100million.

In the complicated legal fall-out, Lexi's administrators, KPMG, claimed they owned the fort and put it on the market. The estate agents admit the fort "needs some work".

Quite how much work became apparent this week when Mr Pooni, a father of four, took the Daily Mail on an exclusive tour of his hideaway, guiding us up the rickety ladder and helping us climb over the railings to get to the front door.

Scroll down for more ...

Gutted: Harmesh by the fortress swimming pool now, and, right, when it was in use

Luxury: The gun rooms have been turned into hotel rooms inside the £4m property

The boat lift and stairways are corroded and out of action and some parts of the outer walkway have been destroyed.

Yet the reception desk, with the room keys sitting in their pigeon holes, looks as if it is only waiting for someone to turn the lights and computers back on.

"It's very spooky at nights," admits Mr Pooni.

"I just sit up in the lighthouse and look at all the lights on the shoreline and hope that the legal situation can be resolved in my favour. But KPMG won't even talk to me."

Instead, the company has taken him to Portsmouth County Court seeking an eviction order.

A judge has so far refused to grant it and the case will now go to the High Court.