FIVE luxury homes are to be built on the site of a Wroughton convent.

The building will be demolished to make way for houses that are likely to be marketed for at least £500,000.

The land has been sold for a reported £1.25 million to Prowting Homes West which was recently taken over by Westbury Homes.

The convent once housed 30 Sister Servants of the Holy Spirit, an order founded in the Netherlands in 1889.

One of the few remaining in the house, Sister Joan Quirke, said: "We have no date yet for moving out but there are only a few of us left here now. I am just house minding."

The convent was built on a site which had been occupied by farm and stable buildings and there were objections when plans were published.

Its closure has been forced by a decline in the number of women wanting to join the order.

The nuns who have done community work in the Swindon area and taught at St Joseph's and Holy Rood Roman Catholic schools, will now live in a poor area of Birmingham which, they believe, is in greater need of them.

Father Michael Cleary, priest at St Joseph's Roman Catholic Church in Wroughton, has praised the nuns' contribution to village life.

"They visited and brought friendship to many people," he said. "We will miss them. They have been one of the interlocking communities that go to make up our village."

People living by the site have welcomed the new houses.

One, Dr David Johnstone, said: "I prefer this to the idea that 40 to 50 concrete boxes might have been built there."