Pupils from the past eight decades are being invited back to a school which is closing this summer.

Cooper Lane Primary School in Horton Bank Top, Bradford, is being closed due to falling pupil numbers and will merge with nearby Westwood Park Primary School, which is also shutting, to form the new Home Farm Primary School.

Cooper Lane Primary has held a series of events this year called Education at Cooper Lane since 1937' to mark the life of the school.

On Wednesday, June 14, it is throwing open its doors to former pupils.

Groups of visitors will be taken on tours of the school on the half hour from 1.30pm to 2.30pm The school has promoted the event on the Friends Reunited website.

Current pupils are also getting involved in the celebrations. A group of nine and ten-year-olds have devised a questionnaire for the former pupils who attend the event.

They will be asked about their favourite teachers and lessons, what school dinners were like and what their happiest memories of the school were.

Headteacher John McDonald said he hoped the event would attract pupils from the past 69 years.

He said: "The message we put on Friends Reunited is beginning to generate interest. We have had one pupil who went to the school in the 1940s who is attending.

"Former pupils will be taken around the building to bring back memories from their time in the school and to see how it has changed."

The school will have a display of records, photographs, video tapes of old school productions and tape recordings of an interview done in the 1980s with teaching staff who worked at Cooper Lane in the 1940s.

Former pupils will also be asked to write their memories of the school in a memoirs book. Mr McDonald said: "The school has changed since it opened. The nursery is now in a separate building "Where the original nursery used to be there is now a computer suite which is very hi-tech but in the roof there are still attachments which were used for hanging nappies down to dry."

"Former pupils will remember the air-raid shelters which were where the staff car park now is."

Mr McDonald will become headteacher of the new school, which will be based on the existing Westwood Park Primary School site in Cooper Lane. Staff from both schools will be transferred there.

e-mail: john.roberts@bradford.newsquest.co.uk