THE seaside hotel where Ian Fleming wrote Chitty Chitty Bang Bang is up for sale for an expected £8 million.

The Lansdowne Place Hotel, formerly the Dudley Hotel, has welcomed illustrious guests including Sir Winston Churchill and Noel Coward.

But in recent years it has fallen into disrepair, closing in January 2013 after going into administration.

Planning permission to convert the 150-year-old hotel into 50 homes has already been secured.

During the 1900s a procession of celebrity guests passed through the hotel and it was a magnet for artists, aristocracy, writers and musicians.

James Bond writer Ian Fleming spent a convalescent stay in April 1961 where he conceived Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.

In 1999 The Dudley was purchased by newspaper proprietor Sir Ray Tindle.

Like Fleming, Sir Ray was a vintage car enthusiast and sponsor of the Brighton Veteran Car Rally, driving his beloved Speedwell Dog-cart with passengers including the American ambassador and members of the Cabinet.

In 2013 the hotel went bust with bank debts of more than £9 million with KPMG called in as receivers.

Mishon Mackay is now marketing the hotel on behalf of Santander and KPMG. The site occupies a terrace of six grand houses, originally known as Lansdowne Mansions.

One of these was Dudley House, occupied in 1851 as a private boarding school and run by Prideaux Richards.

The school was replaced in the mid-1860s by a boarding house, known by 1878 as the Dudley Mansions Boarding House.

Between 1880 and 1897 Alphonse Fortune Lamette expanded the Dudley to include all six houses of Lansdowne Mansions.

In 1911 new owner Benjamin Herniman added the iconic entrance and canopy, designed by FC Axtell, transforming it into the grand Edwardian seaside hotel well-known today.

GRAND PLANS

Lansdowne Place Hotel collapsed into administration in 2013 leaving debts of some £9 million to its bank Santander.

A buyer could not be found for the poorly maintained hotel and administrator KPMG said it was not viable to maintain as a hotel, citing the location and economic climate.

Morgan Carr Partnership Architects of Brighton was appointed to draw up plans to rescue the derelict hotel. 

Plans for the scheme are currently under consideration by Brighton and Hove City Council. If approved it will include 45 residential apartments and five mews houses at the site.

The main building of the five- storey hotel would house 45 three and five-storey apartments. The mews houses at the back of the hotel would be turned into penthouse apartments. 

KPMG said 40% of the units will be affordable, with rented and shared ownership. The plans also include a new garden area, 13 underground car park spaces and secure cycle racks for 68 bikes.