Thomas Hardy used the tower for romantic trysts with his first love

Clavell Tower is perched perilously close to the edge of a cliff that is being worn away by wind and rain in Dorset.

The Landmark Trust wants to dismantle the former lookout tower and move it brick by brick to a new location inland at a cost of up to £500,000.

Thomas Hardy used to take his first love, Eliza Nicholl, to the tower and used a picture of it for the cover of his Wessex Poems.

'Elegant tower'

PD James used the haunting building as the setting for her novel The Black Tower.

Also known as the Tower of the Winds, it was built in 1830 by the Reverend John Richards Clavell of Smedmore, who used it as an observatory for looking out over Kimmeridge Bay.

PD James said: "This is a most elegant and important tower. It has been an inspiration to so many people and is greatly loved.

"It will be a great pity if we cannot save it."