A SCHOOL went back to its roots with a Victorian theme to celebrate 100 years of education.

Staff at Sacred Heart RC Primary School, Blackburn, dressed up in Victorian costume to be the strictest school marms the children had ever met.

All 182 children, who also dressed up in flat caps and breeches, wrote on slates and sang Victorian hymns before putting away their Pokemon cards and scooters to play hoop-la, skittles and puppets. They learned about their ancestors during visits to Helmshore Textile Museum.

Teachers dressed up as characters from Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol in a candlelight performance.

The celebrations will end tomorrow, the exact date of the school's opening a century ago, with a family mass at 10.30am. A book is also to be published later this year.

The school was opened due to the determination of Father Edward Woods, then parish priest of St Anne's RC Church, Blackburn, to serve the new districts of Duke's Brow and Revidge.

The parish went into debt by more than £3,000 to build the school, which was at first run by the Sisters of Notre Dame with 28 pupils.