Victorians built this marvelous structure that stands high and indicates the strength of conventional ways of building. It lies on the outskirts of Sway, a small village next to Lymington, on Britain’s south coast. The tower has a dome-shaped round roof and measures at two-hundred feet in length; hence it could be easily seen from far off areas.
The most incredible and unique attribute of this structure is that not even a single piece of reinforcement steel was used in its construction back in time, making it one of its kind structure that is a hundred percent made of concrete. It stands as the tallest structure built without using reinforcements of any sort; it was also the first-ever of its kind in Britain.
People couldn’t trace back to the Sway tower’s significance as a role player of any sort, as all of what is known is that it was a home for pigeons up till the early 1970s; however, it was converted into a residential house later on.
Andrew Thomas Peterson laid his services as a Judge in All-India, and after he retired from the supreme court of Calcutta, he built the Sway tower. Maybe in Peterson’s mind, it was a symbol of spiritualism of some sort as the guy turned towards spiritual believes while he was in India. According to some stories in relevance to the Sway tower, the late judge saw a spirit ghost of a renowned English architect and, upon the spirit’s instructions and desire, built the Victorian building.
Peterson knew what he had in terms of blessings, and he did a lot on to share his wealth with the poor, the story as it narrates clearly show that Peterson paid a lot more than what should have been spent on such a building at that time. The good man made sure of only employing the unemployed for building this structure and hired around forty workers who built the tower in six years, starting from 1879-1885. Other examples of his work for the welfare of the poor were building cottages for the needy on his land and several other donations for the community.
The tower’s foundations go 2.7 meters in the ground and stand at 216 feet above the ground, and its width is measuring at 18 feet, respectively. From the base, the structure is walled at 60 cm and is 30 cm thick if talking about the walls at height.
Peterson wished to have a light at the top of the tower but was not allowed to do so as it would have disrupted the passing vessels. His death wish was that he be buried in the Sway Tower. His desire was fulfilled as it Stayed as his mausoleum until 1957, following his death in 1906. Later on, his body was unearthed and was buried again in the local churchyard near his wife’s grave.
Paul and Julie Atlas purchased the unique structure in 1973. Till that time, it was home to the local pigeons as it had been so for over 100 years. The building’s seventh floor was filled with tonnes of sand, and Paul had to conduct extensive cleaning of the whole structure. In its re-do, the cleaners measured the pigeon waste to be around somewhere eighteen tonnes, if not any less. “It must never have got any cleaning job in 100 years.” It was converted into a beautiful garden at first, after which the couple utilized it as their home.
The marvelous Victorian tall structure was listed in the market at £3.5million in 2018, and later its asking price was lowered to £1.6 million. However, as of now, the property is not on the list to be sold out, nobody knows if it was purchased by someone new or the couple just removed it from sale due to their specific unknown reasons.
