PAST and present Skipton Girls' High School pupils gathered to look at how the school has changed over the last nine decades.

The Old Girls' Guild is celebrating its 90th anniversary and marked the event with a return to the Gargrave Road school on Friday.

Around 100 members turned up, some from as far away as Canada.

The school has been planning the birthday bonanza for the past year and pulled out all the stops to ensure pupils from bygone days were given a day to remember.

This included activities looking back over 90 years, such as looking at inventions in science and cooking recipes from the 1920s.

The Old Girls, including former headteachers Muriel Kent and Diana Chambers, were also given a tour of their old classrooms, treated to music, dance and drama productions and served a school dinner, including traditional pudding and custard.

Current headteacher Janet Renou said it had been a memorable day for those who came along.

She said: "There are not many girls' schools in the country who can trace their records back to the 1880s, but we have a great deal of archive information on our beginnings as well as the school's very first register.

"And portraits of all our past headmistresses look down on us each day.

"We enjoyed tracking the history of the school and unearthing stories of some of our successful past students.

"This has been something that girls have enjoyed and our celebration of 90 years of the Old Girls' Guild gave them more opportunities for such research."

Mrs Renou added: "Many of the old girls were grandmas of present students, so it was wonderful to see the girls escorting them around the school.

"The girls were keen to learn about the school of the 1950s and were astonished to hear that female school teachers had to be single and once married could no longer work, and that male members of staff in the school would not have been countenanced at the time."

The guild's membership secretary, Helen Platt, said the celebration was a day she and others would never forget.

"It was just tremendous. The school really did make us feel so welcome and gave us a wonderful day," she added.

Skipton Old Girls' Guild was formed on November 24 1917 and started out with 70 members.

At its first committee meeting, held the following January, it was decided that the annual subscription should be 2s6d (12-and-a-half pence), a magazine would be published each autumn and there would be an annual gathering.

There have been changes as the years have progressed - the annual subscription is now £3 and the magazine is published in January or February each year.

At the 1997 annual general meeting, it was agreed that the "gathering" should be changed to a reunion and the first spring reunion took place on March 28 1998.

It has always been the guild's policy to support the school and many gifts have been made over the years.

The guild even purchased the land known as The Hollow, where sports are played and at its 2006 spring reunion it presented an oak lectern to the school.

Several of the annual prizes are sponsored by the guild and members have also presented the school with a portrait of each of its former headmistresses following their retirement from office.