PAST and present pupils and staff of Mary Towerton School, Studley Green, are celebrating the 25th anniversary of their school.

The school changed its name and moved to its present site on June 30, 1976, replacing the former Beacon's Bottom Primary School, established 100 years earlier.

School head Judith Standen said: "In 1976 the school moved up the lane here. Mrs Mary Towerton was a Buckinghamshire county alderwoman and a magistrate and she was the driving force to get the school built."

The school fete will be held this Saturday, the 25th anniversary of the school, and will be opened by the wife of the first headteacher of the school who taught there herself.

Mrs Standen said former pupils have been to the school to talk to pupils about their days there.

She said: "We have had a lot of ex-pupils coming into school to talk to them about their memories of moving from the old school to the new school."

Anniversary celebrations of the village school will come to a climax on July 18 with a school picnic on the playing field and pupils will be presented with a special jubilee bookmark.

Some of the older children at the school have been learning about school life 125 years ago when the Beacon's Bottom Primary School was opened.

Mrs Standen said: "The older children went back a bit further and they had a Victorian morning and teachers and pupils spent a morning as a Victorian school.

She said: "We still have an old blackboard easel and old wooden desks from that time that we have not thrown away.

"It is surprising the sort of things that have changed and the things that haven't."