Long Island nuns selling convent estate for £13m

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Telegraph
By Tom Leonard in New York
(Filed: 09/03/2005)

An order of Catholic nuns has put its convent in the ultra-fashionable Long Island enclave of the Hamptons on the market for a minimum asking price of $25 million (£13 million).

The 15-acre beach-front estate at Water Mill, Southampton, belonging to the Sisters of St Dominic at the Villa Maria Convent, has been deemed financially unsustainable for the half-dozen sisters still rattling about in its 23-bedroom mansion.

Attempts to convert part of the property into a weekend spiritual retreat for exhausted New Yorkers failed to bring in enough money to pay the maintenance costs.

The 1887 Beaux Arts-style mansion includes three guest houses, mock Elizabethan staircase, ballroom, swimming pool and, of course, a chapel. Some of the large bedrooms have been partitioned off to make small rooms more fitting for a nun, but the house has been otherwise little changed since it was bought by the order in the 1930s, said James McLauchlen, a local estate agent.

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