A YORK school is preparing to mark the centenary of its reopening after the "Great Fire of 1899" - a blaze accidentally started by a pupil boiling snails in a classroom.

Bootham School, the country's biggest Quaker boarding and day school, was largely destroyed in the fire and the school was forced to temporarily relocate to Scarborough during rebuilding work.

The unfortunate episode began when young William White Impey was quietly boiling snails out of their shells on the evening of May 11, 1899, in the Natural History room.

He was disturbed by the bell for prep but, deciding that the shells could do with a little more softening, he left the cauldron to boil unattended.

In the early hours of the next morning headmaster John Firth Fryer was woken by a respectful knock on the front door of the school.

It was the fire brigade informing him that his school was ablaze and could he possibly find the key so that they might get in and start to tackle the spreading flames.

The flames were stopped from reaching the boarding houses, but the total devastation of the teaching facilities caused Mr Fryer to tender his immediate resignation.

Arthur Rowntree became headmaster and classes continued every day, even on the day of the fire itself.

But during the following year the scale of the rebuilding project was realised and the school moved to Scarborough, into premises vacated by Oliver's Mount School.

The six months of 'Bootham-by-the-Sea' was recalled with many happy memories by all who experienced it.

The school reopened with a jamboree in January 1902 where a staggering 700 guests listened to 32 speeches over 12 hours, although at the heart of the day had been the Quaker Meeting for worship.

But what became of William White Impey, who was at the centre of the disaster?

Bad luck once more struck when, in adult life, he tried to remove a stubborn tree stump from his land using only a modest shovelful of dynamite - he died of the resulting explosion.

Updated: 11:05 Monday, January 07, 2002