Veteran press photographer Mike Swift is the last person you imagine sharing a monastery with Benedictine nuns.

Mr Swift, 54, is the Slough and Windsor's chief photographer but his four days stay with the nuns of Stanbrook Abbey was a personal assignment.

You can his record of the lives of the 28 nuns in an Easter exhibition running at the Old Court art centre in St Leonard's Road until April 16.

The nuns - whose order dates back to the 17th century - recently sold their Victorian Abbey in Worcester, using the money raised to build a new monastery on the North York Moors.

The building won a major award for the best new architectural project in 2016. Mr Swift was at the presentation ceremony last year when Mother Andrea received the award from The Duke of Gloucester.

He said: “I visited the Sisters with my wife and we both got on really well with them. Once I had broken the ice with them it was agreed I would go back and stay with them for a couple of days in the summer and photograph them all at work in their home.

“To make sure we all felt at ease with each other, I hosted a training session for the nuns to show them how to use the cameras on their phones and iPads to best effect. This meant I was on first name terms with most of them before I had taken a frame and everyone was familiar with me and my camera.”

What Mr Swift was not expecting was to be as moved as he was by the experience of staying with the nuns.

He said: "It was amazing listening to them chant their prayers in Latin, really moving.

"They grow their own food and make their habits. When I said to the Mother Superior she had a wonderful voice she said 'everything in this building is God given'.

"It was the most moving project I have ever done."