A RUNDOWN chapel is having a £50,000 revamp to bring spiritual harmony to a school after four years of upheaval.

For more than 40 years, pupils have celebrated mass in the chapel at the former St Theodore’s High School.

The school merged with St Hilda’s RC girls school in 2006 to form Blessed Trinity RC College, in Ormerod Road, bringing together 1,250 pupils on the same site for the first time ever.

More than £8million has been spent on the state-of-the-art ‘super school’ as part of the Building Schools for the Future scheme.

But the chapel, the only one of its kind in the town, was not included in the college rebuilding budget and needs a facelift to bring it up to date, bosses said.

Headteacher Bernadette Bleasdale said: “Work has started on the only part of the former St Theodore’s school which remains at Blessed Trinity.

“The chapel was built shortly after the school opened in the early 1960s and our new building is designed so that the chapel is the focal point both physically, from the main entrance, and spiritually as it will be the heart of the college community.”

Work has started on the front porch, the concrete piers and columns which have decayed.

It is hoped the work on the 125-seat chapel will be done before the school is officially opened by the Bishop of Salford, the Rt Rev Terence Brain on November 24.

A series of fundraising events have been held to meet the cost of the building work with donations totalling £6,000 already received from, among others, the Knights of St Columba, who have pledged £1,000, and the Sisters of Mercy, the Order that provided many teachers at St Hilda’s.

Future events include a curry night in early December, a concert in college in early January and a dinner at Turf Moor in May.