A FORMER all girls school which closed suddenly two years ago will be transformed into a retirement village.

The former St Mary's School on Mount Battenhall, Battenhall Avenue, has been sold to a national developer of retirement communities who is now working on designs for the site.

Worcester's only all girls school announced it was closing in June 2014 after governors said it had become "impossible to run".

About 270 pupils had to find new schools after St Mary's shut its doors for good at the end of the school year - just after celebrating its 80th anniversary.

For two years, rumours have swirled about what the nine-acre site with a £4million price tag could be used for - with an agreed buyer failing to proceed with a sale in May 2015.

Recently, there has been a lot of talk about the former single sex school being transformed into a retirement complex - rumours confirmed this week by Worcester-based property consultants Andrew Grant.

It said that developers are working on plans for a retirement community providing homes with care and support.

Senior partner Andrew Grant, who advises the Irish Catholic sisters who own the property, has been seeking a partner who can provide a sustainable long term future for the school since it closed.

He has confirmed that a national developer of retirement communities is working on initial designs for the site and has entered into a contract with the sisters.

Plans are likely to be shown to the public at an exhibition in August.

If approved, the development will commence next year.

Retirement communities are typically made up of a development of individual apartments that can be purchased by older people who then benefit from on site provision of 24-hour staffing.

There is often a range of communal facilities such as a dining room, treatment room, guest accommodation, lounge, bar, and maintained grounds and buildings.

The property is based around an elegant Italianate style mansion built in the 1860s called Battenhall Mount.

It was later bought by the Hon Percy Allsop, a member of a wealthy brewing family, who lavished money on it and enlarged the house three fold.