AFTER two years in a convent, former Oxford nun Joyce Hardcastle spent her first night of freedom in a brothel.

She thought it was a B&B and the penny did not even drop when the owner asked how many hours she would be staying.

She said: "I did not realise what the hotel was until I reached my dirty room. I sat up all night in my clothes with the wardrobe pushed up against the door."

No-one would guess the 69-year-old Didcot pensioner had been a nun not once, but twice.

First time round she emerged at the age of 39 alone, unemployed and homeless from the Society of the Holy Child Jesus in East Sussex . Her first job interview was in Liverpool so she boarded the train in Tunbridge Wells and headed north.

"Everything in the convent had been silent, so the noise was unbelievable. My eardrums nearly burst on that journey," the retired teacher remembers. "And the new 24-hour timetable was terribly confusing."

After a slap-up meal she looked for somewhere to stay.

In the morning she visited a department store for a make-over. "I had been cutting my own hair for two years without any mirrors so the hairdresser was horrified when she saw it. I only had one red suit which had been in my suitcase for two years and was a bit big. When the shop assistant measured me I realised I had dropped from a size 18 to 12. It's hard to tell you're losing weight in a habit."

Armed with a new purple suit and a smart perm, she felt ready to face the world and was accepted on an advanced 12 month-home economics course.

But how had Joyce come to be wandering around Liverpool on her own in the first place? Born into a Huddersfield Baptist family, Joyce's father died of pneumonia when she was seven and her mother of liver disease a few years later.

"I was absolutely shattered. I worshipped my mother and her death made me lose my faith. I thought if that was God's way he could keep it," Joyce explained.

It was only when her aunt died and she moved in to look after her uncle that she converted to Catholicism.

"It seemed to have all the answers I was looking for so I resolved to become a nun. But my uncle changed his will because he was scared his worldly goods would fall into Catholic hands and my £50,000 and four-bedroom house inheritance disappeared."

When he died she gave up her teaching job and was accepted by an East Sussex convent.

"My friends thought I was mad. I gave away most of my possessions including my pride and joy - a Humber Sceptre car - a hectic social life and lots of hobbies, including photography, golf and travel." Joyce was one of seven "trainee" nuns - postulants - and at 37 was the eldest by 15 years. "It was too big an age gap really, considering we spent 24 hours a day together."

But she took her vows of chastity, poverty and obedience and adapted to life well. Five hours a day were spent in chapel and the rest were filled with manual work and religious lessons.

"It was very interesting but we were cut off from the outside world and I missed newspapers and TV."

They slept in dormitories, known as cells, and wore black skirts, blouses and white veils. After six months, four of them graduated to novices and the training grew harder.

"We were virtually locked up in a tower and slowly the doubt set in. The order had not changed since it was founded in 1846 and it was so old-fashioned. I couldn't stand it."

At the beginning of her second novice year she left and struck out on her own. Only one of the original seven is still a nun.

She was working at a Middlesex school when she read Documents of Vatican II, in which the Pope outlines the modernisation of nunneries.

"He agreed with everything I had said, so I went back to East Sussex."

She ended up at the Cherwell Centre, a retreat and conference centre in Norham Gardens, north Oxford, where she was allowed to wear her own clothes and got a job at Didcot Girls' School teaching cookery. Three years later she had to make up her mind. "The next stage was all or nothing. It was like being at a crossroads and having to turn left or right. If I had been allowed to carry straight on I would have done, but I wasn't as committed as I had been and decided to stop."

Joyce eventually retired from teaching at 55 but keeps herself busy. And she still sees members of her old order.

"It was a very smooth transition. I bought a bungalow and carried on teaching. I have never regretted my decision."

The number of nuns in Britain is largely unknown. Each order keeps a record, but they are not centralised.

At the last count in 1993 there were 9,000 women in various orders, but the figure is vague and does not specify whether the nuns were active or contemplative - or even what faith they practised.

The Catholic media office said in 1996 there were 1,286 convents in England and Wales.

Sister Bernadette, press officer for the British Contemplatives, said there were 1,200 contemplative nuns in 19 orders, including Anglicans, who live and work in convents - roughly a tenth of the number working in the community.

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