Tagg's Island sits in the middle of the River Thames near Hampton Court Palace. Once said to be haunted by a gypsy curse, many who set up home there have been doomed to failure.
Current owner Grant Braban said the curse was apparently lifted several years ago and takes reassurance that the last two owners didn't suffer the same fate. But even he has suffered some bad luck - his houseboat burned down on the island in 2019.
Once part of the Crown Estate, the island was reportedly bought in around 1850 by a man named Francis Jackson Kent who evicted several squatters from it. According to the legend, one of those squatters was a gypsy who placed a curse on the island so anyone who owned the land would go bankrupt.
And it apparently worked. As reported by Surrey Live, the first victim came in 1852: a local businessman named Joseph Harvey built a beer house and skittle alley there but it had failed within a decade. Next came Thomas George Tagg, a boat-builder who turned part of the island into a pleasure resort in the latter part of the 19th century.
Tagg, from whom the island takes its modern name, made the island famous thanks to this resort, where the houseboats were lit up at night with fairy lights. But not long after his son George took over in 1897, the business saw flooding, the onset of the Boer War, and the death of Queen Victoria. George too ran out of money.
Then came theatre producer Fred Karno, perhaps most famous for discovering a young Charlie Chaplin. Karno opened yet another hotel on the island - this time a luxury getaway called the Karsino with a glamorous ballroom and croquet facilities.
Chaplin apparently performed at the venue before going off to make his name in America, and Peter Pan author JM Barrie also stayed on the island at around this time. But when World War One broke out, then venue went out of business.
For the next several decades the island fell into disrepair and had a number of owners. The current majority owner is Grant Braban, 48, whose family has the freehold for all but six of the 62 moorings.
Grant told SurreyLive that his parents first moved to the island in 1969 when his dad was bankrupt and they rented a houseboat for around £6 per month. Grant's parents were able to get a houseboat valued at £20,000 for just £6,000 because of an owner who was eager to sell.
According to Grant, the boat his parents bought had a funky interior that had been used for a photo shoot in Penthouse magazine. They eventually bought almost all of the island in 1980 when Grant was a child, added the footbridge that provides access to the island in 1981, and dug out the charming lagoon in the middle of the island in 1982 where several houseboats are now moored.
Grant said: "It just languished for a bit as an unnoticed little island, until about 20 years ago at around the time when Kevin McCloud was doing [the TV show] Grand Designs. Suddenly people wanted to live in a nuclear bunker or up a chimney somewhere or down a coal mine, so the island was the perfect thing because houseboats didn't seem so extreme.
"The detachment is what I love about the place - we're close to London, Kingston and Hampton but people just drive past and no one sees us. There's also a great sense of community - there probably isn't a street in London where you know your 30 nearest neighbours on each side, but you do here."
Jane Harte-Lovelace, who first moved to the island 38 years ago, said: "When I first drove over the bridge I knew I had arrived home. The island has wonderful energy. It's a very eclectic group of people, our youngest resident is two, and our oldest is 88."
But both have suffered bad luck, losing their homes in separate incidents in 2019. In Jane's case, the rusted hull of her home gave way in November that year and she lost almost all of her possessions.
That incident took place just three months after Grant's own boat had burned down in August. "I think it was a lithium ion battery in something I was charging that caught fire," he said.
"I had gone for a barbecue seven boats down in just my shorts, T-shirt and flip-flops. Then my girlfriend called me and said there was something going on with the boat, she could hear a popping noise. It was a wooden structure and it completely burned, so I lost everything and I was badly under-insured."
Luckily for Grant, his mother's property, which was adjacent to his, was minimally damaged so he was able to live there while he found a new boat for himself. Despite the incident, Grant doesn't believe the curse was to blame.
"I heard someone had the curse lifted at some point," he said. "But anyway, the two previous owners before my family both retired happily, so I don't really believe there's a curse anyway."
