What were the houses built from? Was there a fort?

The houses were described by colonists themselves as “decent dwelling houses” or “cottages”, meaning they must have been at over one storey high, possibly even two as there are references to “neather (lower) roomes”. The roofs were thatched, as a statement from Ralph Lane shows his fear that Indians in the middle of the night “would of beset my house, and put fire in the reedes that the same was covered with”

Furthermore, the chimneys and foundations appear to have been made of brick as Irishman Darby Glande testified that upon disembarkation at Roanoke “they began to make brick and fabric for a fort and houses”, and archaeological evidence supports this as pieces of brick were found at the fort site as late as 1860. (Porter, pg. 29)

Contemporary maps show there was a fort, as was common of settlements of this type and era, but no renderings of it survive. It has been reconstructed as part of the Fort Raleigh Historic Site, but it is impossible to know if these recreations are accurate.

How did they gather food from their surroundings? Was the ground fertile?

From what I have read, it seems like the main foods consumed by colonists were crops, including corn and fruits that already grew on the trees there, and fish caught from the shoreline, with the Indians usually helping the English plant/catch the food. Game was also consumed.

The colonists had problems with gathering food from their surroundings and were dependent on Indians and England for food and supplies. At one point, such was the scarcity of food “Lane was forced to send groups of settlers to the barrier islands along the coast to live on oysters and other shellfish and to look for passing ships. Master Prideaux and 10 men were sent to Hatoraske Island for this purpose, while Captain Stafford and 20 men went to Croatoan Island, south of Cape Hatteras.29 Sixteen or twenty others were sent at intervals to the mainland to live on oysters and native foods.” (Porter, pg 29)

The ground was described as, “"a most pleasant and fertile ground, replenished with goodly Cedars, and divers other sweete woods, full of Corrants (grapes), flaxe, and many other notable commodities."

How was the island where it stood? How did English travelers reach the island? Did they take boats from the ships? Etc.

The geography of the island meant that Roanoke was difficult to reach itself, as it had a shallow shoreline which put ships that sailed too close at risk of impacting the crags and shoals that littered the shoreline and sinking. Indeed, as Kathleen Donegan writes on the difficulty of settlement, “The English flagship Tyger repeatedly knocked against the hidden outcroppings and nearly wrecked. Left with few provisions and never resupplied [the colonists were] completely unprepared to meet the challenges posed by the new environment.”

Also, with what Native tribes would they have interacted with? What where the local North Carolina tribes?

The relationship between the colonists at Roanoke and local Native Americans is difficult to examine, as there is a popular desire to explain the failure of the Roanoke colony in terms of the tensions between the white people and the indigenous people whose lands they were present in to colonise. Yet, in some respects, the colony have been reported to have interacted positively with the local Indian leaders of their region of Ossomocomuck, as both parties shared a common desire to learn each others’ languages to better communication. Indeed, two Algonquian Indians, Manteo and Wanchese, actually accompanied White back to London, potentially, during their eight months in England, learning enough English to communicate successfully.

The relationship of the colonists with Native Americans is an interesting debate, it is believed that the colonists may have voluntarily moved to the village of Croatoan, which was forty miles south of Roanoke. But a visit here was never made by John White, who discovered the colonists missing and the carving on the tree, so this is impossible to know for sure. But it’s certainly an interesting possibility, and I like to think that they got out alive.

Hope this answered your questions adequately!

Bibliography

Thomas C. Parramore "The "Lost Colony" Found: A Documentary Perspective", The North Carolina Historical Review, Vol. 78, No. 1 (JANUARY 2001), pp. 67-83

Kathleen Donegan "Roanoke: Left in Virginia" from Seasons of Misery: Catastrophe and Colonial Settlement in Early America (University of Pennsylvania Press. 2014)

Charles W. Porter III, "FORT RALEIGH NATIONAL HISTORIC SITE, NORTH CAROLINA: PART OF THE SETTLEMENT SITES OF SIR WALTER RALEIGH'S COLONIES OF 1585-1586 AND 1587"
The North Carolina Historical Review, Vol. 20, No. 1 (January, 1943), pp. 22-42 [North Carolina Office of Archives and History]

Michael Leroy Oberg, "Gods and Men: The Meeting of Indian and White Worlds on the Carolina Outer Banks,1584-1586
The North Carolina Historical Review, Vol. 76, No. 4 (OCTOBER 1999), pp. 367-390 [North Carolina Office of Archives and History]

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