Thomas Hardy used the tower for romantic trysts with his first love

The three-story Clavell Tower, perched on the edge of eroding cliffs at Kimmeridge Bay in Dorset, was awarded the grant from Heritage Lottery Fund.

Purbeck District Council had approved a plan by The Landmark Trust to move the former observatory 25 metres inland.

The scheme is almost 80% funded with a further �155,679 now needed.

Peter Pearce, director of Landmark Trust, said: "This news is a key step in the rescue of Clavell Tower but our attention must now turn to finding the funding for the shortfall of �155,679 before the tower falls in to the sea and is lost forever."

The historic structure, built by the Rev John Richards Clavell of Smedmore in 1830 as an observatory and folly, will be moved brick by brick once the relocation work gets under way.

Thomas Hardy used to take his first love, Eliza Nicholl, to the tower and used a picture of it for the cover of his Wessex Poems.

PD James used the haunting building as the setting for her novel The Black Tower.