A CLASSROOM partly funded by Blenheim Palace has been officially unveiled at a village school.

Bladon CE Primary School is now home to the Marlborough Room, a standalone wooden cabin with folding doors and an outside deck.

The classroom was partly funded by a bursary, which was set up by neighbouring Blenheim to support projects in the community.

Headteacher Tracey Fletcher said: "At Bladon, we have a beautiful building but with very limited space. This new classroom allows us to offer the children a special place to learn.

"As a headteacher with a very limited budget, building a new classroom would have been unobtainable without the generous funding from Blenheim and the hard work of the families in their fundraising.

"We are very grateful for everyone’s support."

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Blenheim, in neighbouring Woodstock, contributed £16,500 towards the project, accounting for roughly half the total costs.

Friends of Bladon School, the parent-teacher association, raised the rest of the money via fundraising and applying for grants.

The Marlborough Room will be used for teaching and in the summer, it will be used as an outdoor learning space, with bi-fold doors and a deck for the children’s desks.

It will also allow the 100-pupil school to split its mixed-year classes and teach aspects of the curriculum separately for the first time.

The Blenheim Bursary, which was launched at the end of 2018, is available to all charities and organisations based within a 20-mile radius of the UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Blenheim's chief executive Dominic Hare said it was a 'pleasure' to attend the opening ceremony, the week before last, alongside pupils and staff.

He said: "The young pupils were an absolute credit to the entire teaching staff, and it was inspiring to see how enthusiastic they were to explore their new learning space."

The bursary scheme is part of Blenheim’s ongoing commitment to more than double its charitable contributions to the community within 10 years.

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An initial target of £2.2m has already been hit, with £3.5m having been raised in year three, so there are plans to announce a revised target figure in the coming months.

Bursary applications are welcome across charity and community projects, including education, infrastructure, transport, health and wellbeing.

Applications for next year’s bursary will open in November and close at the end of January 2020, with successful applicants being notified in March and receiving funds in April.

The current Duke of Marlborough, who resides at Blenheim, was unable to attend the opening ceremony due to illness, but two pupils stood in to pull back the curtain.

Special guests joined pupils and staff for tea and cake in the school hall afterwards.

Other projects and causes to benefit from Blenheim's Bursary so far include Woodstock Youth Club, which received more than £5,000 for its work, and Wootton-by-Woodstock Playground Project, which was given £10,000.

The palace donated £1.6m to charitable causes in 2017-18, a 52 per cent increase on the previous year.