At six-years-old, a Keighley boy - sick and under weight - was placed in a special school to get better.

Sixty-one years later, now a strong and strapping mountaineer, George Steele has gone back to visit the Keighley school which he feels changed his life.

In 1947, the Open Air School - now Braithwaite Special School - in Braithwaite Road, used to be a haven for ill and feeble children, who had their lessons outdoors in the hope that they would get better.

Mr Steele said the children who attended the school were not expected to succeed as well as their peers in life but while he was there Mr Steele was lucky enough for someone to spot his potential.

"While I was here I was unwell and under weight and I had just had my appendix out. Someone spotted that I was brighter than some of the others and they sent me to grammar school to sit my 11-plus."

Having passed his exams, after six months Mr Steele returned to the Braithwaite Road school, and went from strength to strength.

He said: "I was still small when I was 13, I came up to my mother's shoulder, but 18 months later she came up to my shoulder!"

Mr Steele, 67, has enjoyed a very active social and professional life, travelling the world as an engineer in the civil service, becoming a mountaineer instructor and nurturing a passion for photography.

"Obviously, this school helped with my health and my development, but mainly I have very happy memories from being here," Mr Steele said.

Spending the whole day at Braithwaite Special School, Mr Steele met with pupils, spoke with staff and looked up former teachers, colleagues and his own name in the school's records.

"It has changed quite a lot, the main change is the physical change of the extension to the building. But it has been very nice to come back." he said.

Braithwaite head teacher Brian Milner said Mr Steele's visit was interesting for pupils, because he knew so much history about it.

"It is always nice to have people coming back to the school because it is part of our history and the children gain the knowledge just like we do.

"It is very relevant for them because it is their school," he said.

Mr Steele, now living in Rochdale with his partner, Monica Kershaw, is currently a consultant and has three children to his former wife, plus nine grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.