The Castle Mona could be going under the hammer.

Owners the Sefton Group say they are still talking to potential buyers but if no deal is done, the board is considering putting up the historic former hotel up for auction in London in mid-July.

The Douglas building is already listed as a lot in Lambert Smith Hampton’s auction brochure in advance notice of a sale on July 17.

No guide price or reserve have been published but the Manchester-based auctioneers are separately offering the seafront landmark for sale with offers in excess of £1m.

The lot is described as a ’development opportunity’. It includes the 98-bed hotel with historic double height ballroom and dining/function rooms, together with the Manx Superbowl bowling alley and the Chill and Breeze nightclubs.

Sefton Group chief executive Brett Martin said: ’We may go to auction in July but the board has not made a final decision.

’We do have on-going discussions with interested parties. If those negotations go well there will be no July auction. But if we are drawing a blank, we may have an auction. The board are considering it.’

He said no reserve price would be set until nearer the time.

Built as the residence of the 4th Duke of Atholl in 1804, the hotel was closed suddenly by its previous owners in December 2006.

It was acquired, reportedly for about £4m, by the Sefton Group two months later with plans to turn it into a four-star hotel.

That plan came to nothing and it has been mothballed ever since. It was put on the market in 2011.

Plans for the Manx Education Foundation to use the building as an ICT training centre fell through in 2013. That same year the building’s value was marked down by the Sefton Group to £2.5m.

Last year, the then chief minister, Allan Bell, criticised the Sefton Group over the condition of the landmark, telling the House of Keys: ’I think it is absolutely disgraceful, the way the building has been allowed to deteriorate.’

A series of requests by the Examiner to take a look inside the building have been turned down by the owners. Photographs accompanying the auction brochure provide a first glimpse of the faded glory inside the old hotel that has been closed for so long.

But when they were actually taken is not clear.

In December, a potential buyer came forward in the unlikely guise of the King of Moraceae Foundation led by a PhD student who styled himself His Majesty The Sole.

Sole, whose real name is Ian Clanton, wanted to turn the old hotel into a base for new ’meritocratic monarchy’ from where he said he would ’address the world on topics of futurist innovation, space exploration and the future of planet Earth’.