Buy your own lighthouse for just £150,000

It is the kind of place that, for once, justifies the exaggerations sometimes favoured by estate agents. The Old Lighthouse does indeed offer spectacular sea views, and it genuinely is a landmark building.

Nobody can deny that it has many fascinating features - after all, how many other properties have their own lantern room complete with two-ton lens?

This imposing structure, topped by its elegant lanternhouse and balcony, has been a feature of the flat, windswept Kent coast for more than 100 years, its powerful beacon providing a reassuring presence for ships in the English Channel.

Today the 143ft lighthouse, which towers over the open spaces of Dungeness Point, is for sale. Offers of more than £150,000 are being invited for the structure, which was decommissioned in 1961 and Grade II-listed in 1992.

Buyers will get an imposing piece of maritime history. Within the 36ft-diameter, concrete-brick and sandstone structure are a series of mezzanine-style floors made of slate and supported by steel beams. The floors are linked by a circular staircase with decorative wrought-iron bannister, with casement windows providing light.

It would make a unique home, except for one large drawback - applications for a change to residential use have been refused. The current owners have run the building as a tourist attraction.

There is a battery room at the foot of the lighthouse, with a "kitchenette/living area and a cloakroom with shower, basin and WC", according to the estate agent, but it hardly promises sumptuous living.

Still, what owner would not feel a surge of pride on collecting the keys to such a place? Its unique selling point, as they say, has to be the lantern room, whose walls are engraved with the points of the compass. The lantern used to float in a bath of mercury.

The Old Lighthouse, the fourth to stand on the site, first cast its powerful beam across the Channel in 1901. It was replaced by a newer structure, half a mile away, in 1961.

Potential buyers will quickly notice another imposing structure as they approach the lighthouse: two nuclear power plants, Dungeness A and B. These massive concrete structures, which blot out part of the sea view, are nearing the end of their life.

Just don't expect them to disappear soon - Greenpeace says it will be another 80 years before they can be safely dismantled.