The former home of St Peter's Hospice in Bristol has been put up for sale.

The Knowle hospice site has now been advertised for sale four months after it closed to its last patients.

St Peter's took the decision to close the St Agnes Avenue site last summer to cut running costs.

The building, which is more than 110 years old, is being marketed by property agents King Sturge.

The agents have said the site would be of interest to occupiers and developers and could be a residential redevelopment, healthcare or institutional opportunity but have not published an asking price and were unavailable for comment last night.

St Peter's took over the site in 1980, two years after the charity was formed.

The property consists of two large Edwardian detached buildings linked with modern extensions, the gardens and parking for more than 20 vehicles.

The total site takes up 1.06 acres with 1,000 sq m inside the buildings.

St Peter's Hospice supports patients with terminal illnesses through day hospice sessions and inpatient services, as well as providing community support and hospice at home care.

It was launched in the city 32 years ago, originally with a team of community nurses from Lawrence Hill health centre. They moved to the St Agnes Avenue site in May 1980.

As previously reported in the Evening Post, the decision to close the Knowle hospice was taken because about £300,000 worth of work needed to be carried out to patch up the building and make it fit for purpose.

Chief executive Sandie Foxall-Smith said that closing the hospice and moving all inpatient and day hospice care to the Brentry site, which was purpose-built and opened in 1998, would save the charity £500,000 a year. She said the recession had forced the charity to review its situation.

Initially St Peter's said it was working with the council and the NHS to see if it could build a new hospice at Hengrove Park near the South Bristol Community Hospital, which is in the process of being constructed.

But the charity said it is not pursuing discussions about Hengrove at present and the recent focus has been on combining the two hospices at Brentry.

St Peter's closed its day hospice at Knowle in August and the last inpatients were treated at the site in October.

Community nurses and doctors from the organisation have been offering some of their services to patients from Whitchurch Health Centre.

In a statement issued last night St Peter's Hospice said the closure would enable it to almost double the amount of care it is able to provide to cancer patients in the community.

The statement said: "The closure of the building at Knowle has meant we have been able to reduce our running costs by close to £500,000 without reducing patient care.

"In fact, this has allowed us to invest more money in our Hospice @ Home and community teams."

Campaign group Save Our Hospice was formed to fight the closure but failed to alter the decision.

Paula Davis, who was a leading member of the Save Our Hospice campaign, said they were very disappointed to learn that the premises had been put on the market.

She said they had urged the charity to mothball them for 12 months so that the closure's impact on South Bristol could be assessed.

"We think there is a need for a hospice in south Bristol," she said.

"Brentry is a long way to travel for people in south Bristol who want to visit relatives or friends."

Ms Davis said Bristol's primary care trust was carrying out an assessment in south Bristol to find out what end-of-life provision was needed.

She said it was therefore premature to close the hospice before the results of this assessment were known, and would be easier and cheaper to take over the existing hospice buildings than build new facilities "from scratch".