A Barnes school is celebrating its 500th birthday with its own music festival.

Opera star Katherine Jenkins and ex-M People singer and Strictly Come Dancing’s Heather Small will headline St Paul’s School’s Q Festival on May 23.

The outdoor concert will also feature rising star Faryl Smith and end with a spectacular firework display.

Former pupils, parents and borough residents are invited to the event celebrating St Paul’s quincentenary.

The school’s high master Dr Martin Stephen said: “We are trying to throw a very good 500th birthday party. There are very few academic institutions in the world with 500 years of history. I believe we were founded in the same year Henry VIII came to the throne and we have out survived his family, the plague, the great fire and the Blitz.”

Ahead of the Q Festival, billed as Barnes’ one-off version of the Marble Hill concert, the school will be privately celebrating with an apposition.

The apposition, an annual event, sees pupils tested on their knowledge, and if they do not live up to the standards set by that year’s apposer – the high master’s job is at stake.

Tours of the school, classroom displays and sports fixtures will be held from 2.30pm until 5.30pm, when gates open for the concert. The school was founded in 1509 by John Colet after a previous grammar school, established by St Paul’s Cathedral, had fallen into decay. Its first building was destroyed in the great fire of 1666, but was rebuilt on the same site in 1670 and again after the second building became obsolete in 1824. The school moved to its present site, formerly a Thames Water filter-bed, in 1968.

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