NEW flats have been unveiled as part of the transformation of a former hotel.

Fourteen apartments are now available to rent at The Dudley Mansions in Lansdowne Place, Hove.

The building was formerly The Lansdowne Hotel, and The Dudley Hotel before that, and welcomed guests such

as Sir Winston Churchill, Noel Coward and One Direction.

The venue closed in January 2013 after going into administration with debts of £9 million.

Estate agents Spark and Son is listing two of the flats, which have three bedrooms, for £1,800 per month.

The flats consist of fully fitted open plan kitchens, modern tiled high spec

bathrooms, double bedrooms and bright open plan living areas.

This property was built around 1830 as a terrace of six grand houses known as the Lansdowne Mansions. One was Dudley House, which in 1851 was a private boarding school.

By 1854 the school was gone and by 1866 the property was being run as the

Dudley Mansion Boarding House.

Over the following years however, it expanded, changed hands and names and gradually took over the rest of the Lansdowne

Mansion Houses, emerging as the Dudley Hotel in the 1880s.

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

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

It was renamed as the Lansdowne Place Hotel in 2004 after a £3 million investment.

But it was not enough and things started going downhill until 2013 when it finally closed and put on the market for £8 million.

Its contents were sold at auction in June 2013.

Planning permission was granted for conversion to 45 homes but that failed.

They were sad times for the seaside hotel where Ian Fleming wrote Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.