Not many would queue to get into school on a scorching Bank Holiday weekend. But the playground at Park Grove School, York, was positively teeming with people on Saturday as the school threw open its doors for special tours.

Head teacher Andrew Calverley shows a group round Park Grove School, York

Local residents were invited to inspect the work of rebuilding the classrooms which were gutted by fire in 1997.

And among the curious visitors were several former pupils of the school, including 80-year-old Mollie Copeland, whose acquaintance with Park Grove began when she was three, and whose daughter and grandsons subsequently attended the school.

Mrs Copeland, of Park Grove, joined the first dozen or so to be given a tour of the school as it nears its final stages of reconstruction.

Head teacher Andrew Calverley showed the group how the old hall has been slimmed down to make space for expanded ground-floor classrooms, while two new halls have been added to the side of the building.

There was great appreciation in one of the halls where a section of the original outer brick wall has deliberately not been plastered over so that it is on view, warts-and-all, with various bits of graffiti etched into the brickwork.

And the centrepiece of the restored Victorian school, the immense upstairs hall which will have glass flooring to allow light to reach the ground floor, drew similar gasps from the tour group.

Mrs Copeland said: "It is so different yet so nice. I think the children will love it when they come back."

And her daughter Frances Bunyan, who also attended Park Grove, said: "The fire ripped the heart out of the community, and now this is going to put it back, without a doubt."

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.