Towering over the South Downs, Hamilton Palace was to be Hoogstraten's monument to the most important thing in his world - himself.

Solid marble floors, oak doors, intricate detailing: This was to be the most impressive manor house built in the 20th Century. Everything was to be of the highest quality.

Hoogstraten designed a mausoleum in the east wing so he could spend 5,000 years sealed up in an impregnable pharoah's tomb, locked away from the "peasants" of the human race.

But work on the building stopped 18 months ago amid legal wrangling. Hoogstraten lives in a house across the estate. A few other cottages on the land are rented to associates.

Hoogstraten has already poured in more than £6 million but at least another £24 million is needed to finish the job to its original grand design.

Hoogstraten made heavy losses on his gold stocks in the mid-1990s and in recent months much of his million-acre estate in Zimbabwe has been seized under president Robert Mugabe's communist-style land redistribution programme.

He sold off much of his property in Hove just before the house price boom of the late 1990s and there are whispers Mr H may have lost his Midas touch.

Now insiders say the half-mile long vanity palace, with rain pouring through the unfinished roof, is fast-becoming Britain's biggest ever folly.

Plans for Hamilton Palace were first sketched on the back of a napkin in the early 1980s, shortly after the original Gothic home at High Cross accidentally burned down in a mystery fire.

Work on the foundations began in 1985 and Uckfield-based Penrose Construction won the contract for the concrete super-structure in 1996.

Hoogstraten paid £20,000 every fortnight to the company as the building rose up from the Downs.

Packham and Clark, based in Church Road, Hove, were handed the £1.2 million contract for brickwork.

In the summer of 1999 Penrose took over as project supervisors, subcontracting various aspects of the building to outside companies.

In September 2000 Hoogstraten stopped the payments, owing Penrose around £430,000. Their claim is lodged at Brighton County Court.

One of the workers said: "At first he was really enthusiastic, always coming over and checking what we were doing.

"But the way the place was designed was from the outside in. He had this image of how it should look and they tried to put it together from that.

"The palace was initially priced at £6 million but the cost had rocketed.

"Nick's not poor, he's certainly got a few million, but I don't think it's anywhere near as much as he tells everyone.

"He always talks about all this art and furniture he's collected, but no one's ever seen it. It's a bit like Robert Maxwell, he's created this myth around himself and over the years he's told his story so many times he believes it himself.

"If he had the money and Hamilton Palace was really supposed to be this personal monument where he would lock himself away and put the V's up to the rest of the human race, you'd think he'd finish it at any cost.

"But it's just standing there deteriorating, with the rain flooding in through the roof. I think it will end up being the biggest folly of the 20th Century."