IT WAS a day unlike any other for school girl Chenai Thomas.

The 10-year-old pupil from Haxby Road Primary School enjoyed a day as Lord Mayor, joining the Civic Party on official business yesterday.

To kick-start the fun, Chenai was collected from school in the civic limousine and taken to the Guildhall for a tour before donning miniature Civic robes to accompany the real Lord Mayor, Cllr Sonja Crisp, to a citizenship ceremony.

Lunch followed and then a backstage tour of York Theatre Royal, before Chenai returned to school.

Her day of Civic duties was a reward for winning a competition that was part of the Digital Adventurers project, organised at the school by the new Digital Arts Media Guild.

Chenai said: “Today was awesome. We got to visit the inner chambers in the Guildhall and went in the same room that King Charles I had been in and we think Shakespeare might have been in there too getting ready for one of his plays.

"After that, we went through a secret passageway up on to the roof of the Guildhall and we saw secret codes that had been carved into the stone hundreds of years ago.

"We saw behind and underneath the stage at the Theatre Royal and this afternoon I got to give out the medals to people from all over the world at the British Citizenship Ceremony which was very important. I really enjoyed going to the registry office and finding the record of my birth too.”

Cllr Crisp thanked Haxby Road Primary for their support and congratulated all the pupils for their work during the competition.

"It was a busy day and I was grateful for Chenai’s support throughout.”