Eerie pictures show a wheelchair and mobility scooter left abandoned outside a derelict care home which closed 12 years ago.

The remote building in Molash, between Canterbury and Ashford, has been ransacked by vandals – with windows smashed, roof tiles destroyed and graffiti covering the walls.

The property has a rich and varied history from its time as a hotel and nightclub, with links to royalty and even James Bond.

Now the former Northdown Residential Care Home is set to go under the hammer with a guide price of £500-£520,000.

Auctioneers Clive Emson say the property is in need of total refurbishment and repair, as seen in pictures taken inside showing the scale of the damage caused by louts.

It is being marketed as a detached two-storey building with a single-storey extension and a detached chalet bungalow, together with various outbuildings/garages.

The seven-and-a-half acre plot comes with planning permission for development.

Once home to the Celeste Octet hotel and nightclub, in recent times the building has been left to ruin.

Believed to have been built in the 1890s, the Celeste Octet was one of the places to be in the 1920s and 30s and bore the same name as the band the owner played with.

Opened by Mrs. J. H. Squire, the hotel was described as the "smartest roadhouse in England's countryside" and rapidly became the rendezvous of musician John Henry Squire's innumerable followers.

It is thought King Edward VIII, before his brief reign, and his friends were regular visitors.

By the 1950s, there was a transport cafe, run by Jimmy McCarron, attached to the facility which would become a regular for Coulling Bros lorry drivers passing through the area.

Some locals believe that Roger Moore and Dorothy Squires might have lived there in the 1960s. This rumour appears to be unfounded – although in Moonraker, Ian Fleming describes how James Bond races his Bentley through Kent, including along “the Molash Road”.

Northdown House was converted from a hotel and cafe in 1982 and became what would be known as Northdown Residential Care Home.

In 1987, a proposal to extend the residential home to provide accommodation for 60 residents – more than treble its 18-person capacity at the time – was rejected.

But the facility got its wish for an expansion a year later when a 10-bedroom extension and a change of use from residential home to nursing home was approved.

Within 10 years, a new planning application was lodged to convert the site into two residential units – but this was snubbed.

The care home closed in 2011.

Fresh plans to tear down the building to make way for three new-builds, in what developers felt was an “effective use of a brownfield site”, were also rejected.

Ashford Borough Council said the proposals would cause “unacceptable visual harm to the character and appearance of the countryside”.

Taking the proposals back to the drawing board, a revised version of the scheme was put forward in March 2021.

Rather than see the entire building removed, the application suggested partly demolishing the dilapidated extension to the house and replacing it with a new one.

Providing seven apartments within the main building and another dwelling through the renovation of an on-site cottage, the team behind the scheme felt it would “reinvigorate the site and be an improvement for the parish”.

This time around, council bosses gave the project the green light in August this year – with the permission lasting for three years.

The auction to sell the lot will commence on November 1 and can be accessed via Clive Emson’s website.