Imagine perching your posterior where a rock 'n' roll legend sat and pondered some of the most popular songs in music history.

Peter Dennison is offering Beatles devotees that chance by selling a piece of furniture he salvaged from John Lennon's Tittenhurst Park mansion.

This is not a luxury suite or an elegant armchair, however, but a humbler resting place - one of Lennon's toilet seats.

The wooden seat has just gone on display in the window of the Brighton Musical Exchange shop in Trafalgar Street, Brighton.

It belongs to Mr Dennison, owner of French furniture firm Moth, based opposite.

He bought the seat in 1989 when his London-based architectural salvage company was offered furniture by contractors working on the Georgian mansion in Berkshire.

Mr Dennison said: "We bought several items including some marble and cast-iron panels but I personally kept hold of the toilet seat.

"It's hard to say for sure whether John Lennon used it but the toilet looked like it had been there since Victorian times and throughout his stay there so I would imagine he would have done so."

He thought a music shop would be a more suitable place to display the seat, which is accompanied by a brass plaque explaining the Lennon connection.

Mr Dennison, who opened his Brighton shop with his wife Kim Colivet seven months ago, said: "I lived in France for ten years and just had the seat hanging around doing nothing so thought this might be a good time to sell it.

"I know it's not of any great historical importance. It's not one of Lennon's guitars, for instance. But some Beatles fan might like to find a place for it."

The seat has been given a £285 price tag. However, Brighton Musical Exchange shop assistant Tank said: "We're actually hoping we don't sell it because it's attracting so many people into the store.

"Almost everyone who comes in has been asking about it and commenting on how unusual it is."

Lennon bought Tittenhurst Park and its 72-acre grounds for £145,000 with second wife Yoko Ono in May 1969.

They lived there until he moved to New York and sold Tittenhurst Park to former bandmate Ringo Starr in 1973.

It was the setting for The Beatles' final photo session, to promote their Abbey Road album, on August 22, 1969.

A film accompanying Lennon's 1971 solo album Imagine was shot in the grounds of Tittenhurst Park.

The footage for the title track shows Lennon playing the piano inside the mansion while Yoko Ono opens the curtains, allowing sunlight to stream in.

In October 1970 Tittenhurst Park hosted Lennon's last meeting with his father Freddie Lennon, who lived in Hill Brow Road, Brighton, between 1966 and 1976.

It was also the only time Lennon met his half-brother David Lennon, whose mother Pauline still lives in Brighton.

Ringo lived at Tittenhurst Park until early 1988, when he sold up to Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan al-Nahyan, president of the United Arab Emirates.

He instigated the £55 million renovation of the house and gardens in 1989, scrapping many of the fittings from the two Beatles' time there.