A COMMUNITY of nuns has sold its possessions for more than £90,000 in readiness for a move to a new convent in North Yorkshire.

The Conventus of Our Lady of Consolation, a community of 25 Benedictine nuns, sold the furniture at its current home at Stanbrook Abbey, in Worcestershire, because it is moving to a new monastery at Wass, near Helmsley, next Easter.

Abbess Andrea Savage explained: “We can’t take everything with us to Yorkshire, but of course there were some things we decided were too precious to sell.

“We have saved some Mouseman furniture, which was made in Yorkshire in the first place.

“The media interest in the sale has been a bit of a surprise, although we are a well-known abbey, because of our links to George Bernard Shaw and Sir Sydney Cockerell.”

Abbess Savage said that the nuns were very excited about the move.

She said: “We are all looking forward to it.

“Although some of the nuns are moving away from their families, some are moving closer.

“We have a nun who is originally from Scarborough, so she is moving closer to home.”

The nuns first applied for planning permission for the new monastery in 2004, with designing and planning taking place throughout 2005 and 2006, and building starting in 2007.

Abbess Savage said: “We decided to move because we started evaluating our monastic living, which is split into three parts – prayer, spiritual reading, and manual labour.

“We realised that the manual labour and the upkeep of our property was taking up too much of our time.

“Stanbrook Abbey is set in four acres of land. It was built in the 19th century, and it is five storeys high, so it takes a lot of maintenance and swallows up a lot of money.”

The new monastery, which is being built on a hill at Wass Bank, will be ecologically friendly, with sedum roofs, solar panels, rain water harvesting, and reed bed sewerage.

The low-lying building will feature cells for each of the nuns, a chapel, a kitchen, a recitary, a novitiate – where the trainee nuns study, a laundry room and a sewing room.

Abbess Savage declined to reveal how much the building cost, but said she expected it to be finished by March 1, 2009.