An artist is donating rare chalk sculptures to the National Trust in a bid to help protect the county’s iconic White Cliffs.

The conservation charity needs to raise £1m by Friday, September 22, to secure a strip of land directly behind the famous Dover landscape, amid fears it will be snapped up by developers when it goes up for sale.

The campaign has been backed by Forces’ sweetheart Dame Vera Lynn, who sang The White Cliffs of Dover. And now 80-year-old Charlie Samuell is offering his support too.

The retired businessman, of Murdoch Chase, Coxheath, wants to donate a number of his works to the National Trust to sell in aid of the appeal.

He said: “It is extremely important the cliffs are protected. That coastline is Britain to a lot of people, and to lose any of it would be absolutely crazy.

“I’ve been carving chalk since I was a child because I lived by the chalk slopes in Box Hill in Surrey.

“It is a very soft material to work with and sometimes it is very difficult because you don’t know what will reveal itself. It has many faults in it, you find shells and other things beneath the surface.”

Mr Samuell took evening classes in sculpture decades ago, but only really started to develop his hobby once he retired.

Since then, he has made hundreds of sculptures and exhibited in spaces including Riverside Art Gallery in Yalding Nucleus Arts Centre, Chatham. He believes he is one of just a handful of chalk sculptors in the country.

As well as donating his art, he also wants to scale up one of his works – a 15-inch-tall piece of a sitting man modelled on King Ethelbert, a former ruler of Kent.

Mr Samuell: “It’s been mentioned to me before that it would look good on the cliffs, and I would be happy for them to have it if they have somewhere to display it. The original was made of Dover chalk so it would be very fitting.”

For more on the National Trust appeal, click here