The grandparents of murdered eight-year-old Sarah Payne are planning to leave their Sussex home because it holds too many memories.

Terry and Lesley Payne said their grandchildren rarely visited them in the village of Kingston Gorse, near Littlehampton, where paedophile Roy Whiting abducted the schoolgirl.

The couple are planning to move 200 miles away.

Sarah's parents, Michael and Sara, cannot face being just yards away from where their daughter was snatched three years ago.

Lesley, 50, said: "It's the only way we will be able to see the rest of the family on a regular basis.

"At the moment they simply can't bring themselves to visit us because the house holds so many memories.

"There is no way they can get to us without passing the field where Sarah was abducted and it's too much for them to bear."

Sarah disappeared while playing near her grandparents' home in July 2000.

Her body was found near Pulborough 16 days later.

Whiting, from Littlehampton, who had a conviction for child abduction, was sentenced to life for her murder in 2001.

Lesley said they were thinking of moving to a cottage in Dartmoor.

She described how pregnant Sara, Michael and their other three children had visited the house only a handful of times since the murder.

She said: "If we want to see them we have to go to their home in Surrey. When they come here it brings it all back."

Lesley said she was still being treated for stress and depression despite it being three years since Sarah's body was found.

She said: "I thought I would have got over it by now but it has got worse."

Husband Terry said the decision to leave Kingston Gorse was difficult because the couple had fallen in love with the village since moving there seven years ago.

He said: "It's a fabulous place to live and the people are lovely.

"But every time an anniversary pops up it is just too much and it's never going to get any easier."

Meanwhile, students at Brinsbury College, near Pulborough, have made a metal heart as a memorial to Sarah.

It will stand near to where her body was dumped and will be engraved with a poem by Detective Inspector Martyn Underhill, who hunted her killer.