Trust wants to open up lighthouse

Strutt & Parker has the lighthouse up for sale for £850,000

A trust has been set up to try to raise money towards a bid to buy a 175-year-old lighthouse in East Sussex.

The Belle Toute Lighthouse Preservation Trust is seeking charitable donations to enable it to open up the Grade II-listed building for public use.

The trust's Rob Wassell, from Surrey, said he remembered Belle Toute from when he lived in nearby Peacehaven.

The lighthouse, on top of cliffs at Beachy Head, has been put on the market by its current owners for £850,000.

Mark and Louise Roberts have had a family home there since 1996, and it now boasts five bedrooms and several other rooms over its three floors.

BBC set

Mr Wassell, who now lives in Redhill, hopes to be able to buy the lighthouse and open it up to visitors and bed and breakfast guests.

He said the preservation trust would be a not-for-profit organisation, and charitable status would be sought once more trustees had been appointed.

Its website said it was "formed with the sole aim of purchasing and maintaining the Belle Toute Lighthouse".

It was a working lighthouse until 1902, since when the building has been a private home, a tea shop and the setting for the BBC drama, Life and Loves of a She-Devil.

In 1999, Mr and Mrs Roberts employed specialist engineers to lift and move the structure 17m (56ft) back from the cliff edge because of the threat of coastal erosion.