Of course, enthusiasm alone cannot keep them going, and the convent relies on donations, legacies, fundraising and "good shopkeeping", as Sister Anastasia puts it, to sustain itself. Business rather than charity must frequently take precedence in decisions about the convent's running. This has involved selling off an unsustainable operation at Copthorne, and closing one of the order's nursing homes, making more than 30 lay staff redundant. What money was left then went into establishing a new house and school in Mysore, India. "The guilt was tremendous, all those people jobless," laments Sister Anastasia. "But being business-minded is crucial to our survival."

Even at Littlehampton there has only been one new postulant in the past year, Nigerian Sister Attracta. There are many factors for the lack of new British entrants, among them the changing role of women, and the fact that traditional care work, such as nursing and teaching, is no longer the preserve of nuns. "I had an aunt who wanted to be a nurse," says Sister Teresa. "She certainly didn't want to be a nun. But she became one in order to fulfil her nursing vocation. While during the 14th or 15th centuries, it may be true to say that convents were full of unhappy women, tucked away because they were plain or had no dowry, I don't think women of my aunt's era were any less committed. Instead, they were touched by convent life. But Carmel has always been a rare existence; to fill England with Carmelite nuns wouldn't be appropriate. It is the quality of spiritual communities rather than the quantity that we should focus on."

There are exceptions to the diminishing rule. The order of the Congregation of Jesus is transferring its previously dormant novitiate to the Bar Convent in York as it prepares to receive three new sisters. Sister Gemma Symonds, the order's press officer, and director of the Religious Life institute at Heythrop College, University of London, believes this suggests that vocations are "very slightly on the rise again". Indeed, the National Office for Vocation predicts that the number of postulants may even reach a ten-year high this autumn.

I ask the sisters if the debate about female priests has created discontent among Catholic women who might have once been attracted to the religious life. This, they think, is more a secularist, feminist projection than any real observation of internal church politics.