A SCHOOL is taking a big step back in time – by installing a Second World War air raid shelter.

Edwards Hall Primary School, in Leigh, has learning support assistant Tracy Cox to thank for the addition to the school’s resources. She said: “It will be part of a permanent living history display.

“We will also be telling the children about the wartime Dig for Victory campaign and surrounding the shelter with a wartime garden.”

Known as an Anderson shelter, it has been in a garden in Grays since the 1940s before Mrs Cox’s appeal for a shelter unearthed three shelters in Essex.

Then they were sunk into deep holes in gardens and the excavated earth was used to cover whatever of the shelter was still above ground.

The school turned to former pupil Dan Carey, who runs his own building company, to dig the hole. Mrs Cox added: “He was here in the 1990s and was very happy to help.”