A historic convent building in Newton has found a new life as a bookshop. And another former convent in Grey Lynn has just been sold for $4.1million. Warwick Jordan who runs Hard to Find Bookshop needed a new home for his 90,000 books. His shop was in Onehunga but the building was sold and the new Read more
Constructed as a convent in the 1950s and later home to a legal practice – a landmark Papakura building is to go under the hammer as part of Bayleys’ final Total Property auction for 2017. The 296sq m, two-level building, on a large (1012sq m) site at 53 Wood St is for sale with vacant Read more
Almost all who have had the privilege of being educated in convents remember nuns whose lives were ones of fulfilment, vigour and purpose On reading Tales out of School: Recollections of Ex-Covent-School Girls, published by the Pastoral Research Centre Trust two thoughts occurred to me: a. that you only realise how important something is when it Read more
A former convent in Grey Lynn, now in use as a boarding house for the poor, is on the market. The going price is over $5 million. This week the owner was served with notices from Auckland Council advising he is in breach of numerous serious health and safety regulations. Owner Rentyn Turner bought it Read more
An order of nuns says a court ruling allowing singer Katy Perry to buy a Los Angeles convent was based on a mistranslated Vatican decree. The nuns, from the Immaculate Heart of the Blessed Virgin Mary order, argued that Perry’s lawyers misled a judge using the document, which had been incorrectly translated from Latin. The Read more
A historic convent outside Blenheim has been bought by the Marlborough Tour Company to provide luxury accommodation for the jet-set crowd. The old St Mary’s convent was built in 1901 for the Sisters of Mercy in Blenheim. It was later moved to its present location in Rapaura, 10 minutes outside Blenheim, where it has been used as Read more
Singer, songwriter and sex symbol Katy Perry may be one of the best-selling, chart-topping, top-earning artists of all time, but the “Roar” performer may have met her match in a group of Los Angeles nuns. For years, Perry reportedly has had her eye on the Los Feliz villa that served as the convent for the Read more
I call Sr Silvana on the landline and she apologises for not having a mobile signal – she was in the basement. Not walking the cloister in silence but running a hostel and helping the students she works with. Much of our conversation is spent talking about school (I went to one run by the Read more
A century-old convent’s transformation into a gracious family home got a tick from perhaps the hardest people to please – the nuns who used to live there. The former Brigidine Sisters convent, built in Pahiatua in 1912, was bought and trucked to Greytown in December by retired academic John Bushnell to be turned into a Read more