IF YOU have got £1.2 million to spare and want a spectacular sea view in an area steeped in history then White Ladies could be just the pied-à-terre you are looking for.

This timber-clad coastal home close to Burton Bradstock is for sale with a guide price of more than a million pounds from Savills.

It has been modernised and refurbished by its current owners since 2008.

It takes its name from the White Ladies who lived on St Bride Farm on what was to become the Othona community – and most particularly from the remarkable Adela Curtis.

She was a Christian, vegetarian, tee-totaller, patriot, pioneer of self sufficiency, spiritual director, healer, school teacher, economist and ecologist.

According to the Burton Bradstock village website she was an organic farmer, vegetable gardener, fruit grower, bee-keeper, weaver, shoemaker, clothing manufacturer, dietician, hygienist, sewage expert, publisher and bookseller.

In 1921 Miss Adela Curtis, then aged 57 and in poor health, brought her Christian commune of celibate and contemplative vegetarian ladies to the Dorset coast to work on land around the newly built farm of St Bride just on the outskirts of Burton Bradstock.

For 50 years, the land had produced nothing but gorse, brambles and couch grass, rabbits, weasels, stoats, snakes, foxes, badgers and wild birds.

They wanted to prove they could not only be self-supporting in food, clothing, fuel, housing and all other necessities.

The results were so good that a little colony of wooden cottages each with a quarter of an acre of fruit and vegetable gardens gradually grew up.

They also built a large chapel and this was finally completed in 1938. By this time they had become the Christian Contemplative Community and they lived by a strict set of rules.

They lived the good life on organically produced food and to help this their waste sewage was collected and distributed on the fields and they managed without piped water or electricity.

The ladies of the commune were always in creamy veils and robes they were soon called 'the White Ladies'.

Miss Curtis died in 17 September 1960, aged 96.