FORMER schoolboys travelled from as far as Canada to attend a 40th anniversary reunion at a school in Trowbridge.

After two-and-a-half months of planning and hundreds of phone calls, 45 former pupils of Nelson Haydon School, now the Clarendon College, were brought together under one roof on Saturday.

The event was organised by Robbie Doel, 52, of Middle Lane, Trowbridge, in a bid to reunite his former classmates.

Mr Doel, who runs a second-hand food machine company in Trowbridge, said: "It was a labour of love for me to be honest. It took a lot of detective work. I made hundreds and hundreds of phone calls. It was absolutely wonderful seeing everybody.

"The hardest to find was Chris Rudlings. I only found him about four days before the actual event. He is a long distance lorry driver but he came up and that was great."

One of the former pupils was Greg Suggitt, a stand-up comedian, who performed on the night and was the Master of Ceremonies in the old assembly rooms at Clarendon College.

Mr Doel found his old school friends by using a picture from the archives in Trowbridge Museum of all 500 schoolboys who attended Nelson Haydon in 1969.