HOLIDAYMAKERS wanting to stay in the cliff-top hotel that inspired literary greats Thomas Hardy and PD James will have a long wait - as it's booked up until July 2019.

Clavell Tower, which overlooks Kimmeridge Bay, is so popular with visitors that bookings are made many months in advance.

The Grade II listed tower, which was built in 1830, was painstakingly dismantled and rebuilt 85ft inland by building conservation charity the Landmark Trust more than a decade ago.

The works, which cost £900,000, were needed to preserve the building after coastal erosion left it perched close to the edge of crumbling cliffs.

Each of the 16,277 stones were carefully photographed and numbered so the tower could be accurately rebuilt.

Experts now predict the tower could stand in its current spot for another 200 years, rather than five had it remained in its initial position.

It opened to the public as a holiday let in August 2008.

A spokesman for the Landmark Trust said: "Clavell Tower is definitely one of our most popular properties.

"Ever since we opened it in August 2008 it's just been chock-a-block.

"It has quite a dramatic story to it as we basically took it away from the edge of the cliff and put it back together again further back - that essentially bought it another couple hundred years.

"The location is stunning - being able to stare out at the sea while lying in bed is quite spectacular.

"People do have to be really organised and think far ahead to have a holiday there, but because it's so popular people know they have to be prepared.

"As soon as we release new dates they get booked really quickly. I would advise people to ring up within the first hour or two of the dates being released."

The tower was first built by Revered John Richards Clavell as an observatory and folly.

After he died in 1833 and passed the estate to his niece, the tower became a destination for picnics and family expeditions.

Thomas Hardy is said to have courted his first love, Eliza Nichols, there and used it as a frontispiece for his Wessex Poems.

From the 1880s until 1914 it served as a lookout post for the coastguards, but was then left empty and became increasingly derelict.

PD James was inspired to write her book The Black Tower after seeing it in 1973. The tower was painted black for the TV adaptation of the book in 1985.

The transformed tower now offers accommodation for two with a bathroom, bedroom, kitchen and dining room and a lounge over four storeys.

It can be booked for a three-night weekend, four-night midweek break or a week, and prices start from £466.

The next bookings for July to December 2019 will be made available in early spring this year.