A complex restoration project is hoping to raise nearly a million pounds to rescue the Cobham Dairy.

The Landmark Trust is hoping to restore the 200-year-old Grade II listed building to its former glory.

The charity needs to raise £954,000 to complete the project and turn the dairy into a building available for holiday rentals.

Ecclesiastical Insurance has also teamed up with the Landmark Trust to save the 18th century dairy and remove it from the Buildings At Risk Register.

Mark Hews, of Ecclesiastical, said: “I am delighted we are partnering the Landmark Trust in saving this important building for the nation and at the same time supporting the specialist craftsmen and women who will benefit from applying their skills.”

The restoration project will involve detailed historic research and specialist craftsmen as the building is very decayed with graffiti on the walls, boarded windows and an exterior stripped bare of slate.

Anna Keay, director of the Landmark Trust, said: “Cobham Dairy is a rare and fragile survival and once lost, such precious heritage cannot be retrieved.

“A new future as a landmark is the only way this gem can survive.”

The Gothic-revival dairy was built in the grounds of Elizabethan Cobham Hall which is now an independent girls’ school near Gravesend.

It was designed in 1794 by James Wyatt - one of the greatest architects of the age – and commissioned by the 4th Earl of Darnley for his wife Elizabeth Brownlow.