IT has been a growing attraction year-on-year and now it has its very own stage.

Staff and students at Ringwood School have built a custom-made 360-seat theatre at their grounds to accommodate the increasingly popular production of Starlight Express.

Having rapidly expanded in recent years, the show's organisers decided at the end of last year's show to have a venue big enough to meet the demand.

Facilities manager Sam Coombes called it "the biggest event in the school's calendar".

"The idea came about at the end of the show so it's been a year in the planning," he said.

"Then last Monday we started to build it. It will have taken us the best part of four weeks to build it all and we'll start dismantling it after the last show on February 13 but we only have five days to get it down.

"We have always had a good range of people come to view the show. We normally have an odd seat left but this year we sold out two weeks before the show started. We have got one person from North-East London coming so we have attracted quite a wide audience which is nice."

The 80 plus cast of students - most of whom don the discernible skates - are supported by the technical team, made up of 35 students studying for their BTEC arts course.

Part of the course means they work out the costs involved of running the production, as well as being involved in the set design.

"It's all part of the learning process for them," Mr Coombes added.

"The school couldn't afford to throw money at something of this size."