A PHOTOGRAPHIC exhibition celebrating 100 years of the Minster School went on display this week.

The exhibition, in the North Transept of York Minster, features over 200 photographs of the school dating back to its re-founding in 1903.

The Rev John Roden, 65, Vicar of Appleton Roebuck and Acaster Selby parishes, and senior chaplain of the Selby Coalfield and District industrial Mission, spent two months putting the photographs together. The exhibition was first shown on the centenary of the Minster School's re-founding on April 28 this year.

He said: "Former pupils were thrilled to bits to see it. People were disappointed when it finished, especially those who hadn't seen it."

Mr Roden is currently writing a centenary history of the Minster School. He was a teacher there from 1964-66 before he went on to teach at a missionary school in Zambia. He has taken about a third of the exhibition's photographs himself, and collected many others from former choristers.

The timing of the exhibition also coincides with the annual reunion of the York Minster Old Choristers' Association.

Former Minster choristers swelled the ranks of the choir at Evensong, when they travelled from as far afield as the Isle of Man for their 90th reunion.

After they sang in the Minster they enjoyed a celebratory dinner at St William's College.

Tony Neal, 60, of Highthorne Road, York, who is honorary treasurer of the association, said: "It's quite an experience to sing in the Minster. The whole place is enlightening."

Updated: 08:45 Thursday, September 11, 2003