In October 1995 The Mail reported how Our Lady's Chetwynde School at Barrow, which had soared to success since it took over from a small convent school in 1984, had a new badge.

The move linked Our Lady's, then an independent school, firmly with local history and nearby Furness Abbey.

The school had just 100 pupils when taken over by a charitable trust and board of governors. It now had 500 children.

A red marble statue of the Virgin Mary holding the infant Jesus once stood in the school grounds, but was moved in the 1980s to the grounds of St Mary's RC Church in Duke Street, Barrow.

A gift from admiring pupils of the original Crosslands Convent School on the site, it was called Our Lady of Furness and based on drawings of the ancient seat of Furness Abbey, which was devoted to the Virgin.

The school used drawings from an ex-pupil Margaret Foran and facts from local historian Alice Leach to design its new badge featuring the Virgin.

In 1996 Chetwynde Sixth Form Drama Group members took their latest production to Forum 28 in Barrow.

The group had been formed four years previously and produced Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream as a promenade in the school grounds, followed by Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion, performing a scene from the show for Princess Margaret when she opened a sports hall at the school.

The 1996 production was Sandy's Wilson's The Boyfriend, a 1950s pastiche of 20s musical theatre with numbers like I Could Be Happy With You and The Boyfriend.

The show was set in Nice where the girls at a finishing school were enjoying their first dalliances with their boyfriends.

Michelle Larcombe played Polly, a teenage girl who did not have a boyfriend but pretended she did who then had a frantic search to find one. Jamie Ingham played Tony, who fitted the bill.

Other leading parts were taken by Amber Roake as the headmistress and Kristopher Lipscombe as the father.

School drama coach David Marcus directed the production.