This little graveyard and the surrounding high brick walls are all that remain of the Servite Convent that stood here from 1888 until it was demolished in 1975, having closed a year earlier. The convent stood in 7 acres of land and had a separate chapel and a lodge house where a caretaker lived. The Roman Catholic nuns who lived here were part of a silent, contemplative order, who lived and worked with only speaking for half an hour a day to arrange the following day's work and devotions. They wore black habits and sandals all year round, no matter the weather! The nuns would rise from bed at midnight for prayer, return to bed and rise again at five for prayers and meditation, and celebrate Mass before breakfast. They would work until midday prayers, followed by a frugal lunch, then more prayers from 2.30 until 3pm, followed by more work, evening prayer at 5pm, supper at 6pm, then recreation until bedtime at 8.30. There was never more than 23 nuns living here, and their main work was laundering the linen and vestments for the Servite priests and the Church of Our Lady of Sorrows in Clarence Road. which is still thriving in Bognor. The nuns had very little contact with the outside world. They grew much of their own food in the grounds of the convent and kept chickens and had everything else delivered. Visitors would ring a bell and speak to the Porter Nun through a grill in the door. When the convent closed, in 1974, the 16 remaining nuns moved to a convent in Begbroke near Oxford, and when this also closed, they moved back to St Juliana's Convent in Bognor, where the last of the nuns who had lived in the Hawthorn Road Covent died in January 2017. The Servite Convent that stood here was the first and only Enclosed Convent of Servite Nuns.
Hawthorn Road was originally called Sheepwash Lane, but was changed when Bognor began to have aspirations as a fashionable seaside resort.
This geocache is placed here with kind permission of the Servite Friars.