An OXFORD dance school, which has taught more than 3,000 people to dance over the years, needs help to find out just how old it is.

The Vera Legge School of Dance has been teaching budding dancers ballet and tap dancing, and entertaining audiences, since the mid 1930s – at least.

But despite being a springboard for the city’s emerging talent, teacher Jo Walton, who trained at the school as a child and now runs it, said no-one knows when it was actually set up.

She added: “We think it has been going for about 80 years, but we would love to find out so we can officially mark a date and celebrate its anniversary.”

The school, which was formerly held at the Cowley Community Centre, regularly holds showcases and previously performed in panto mimes at the Oxford Apollo – now the New Theatre – in George Street.

In the shows, the dancers worked alongside such big names as Ted Ray, Roy Castle, Russ Abbott, Bruce Forsyth, Lulu, Freddie Garrity and Jim Davidson.

The school itself has nurtured the talent of some of Britain’s best-loved dancers and has seen many of its pupils go on to enjoy successful stage careers – including Dame Maggie Smith, Judith Stott and the choreographer Bill Drysdale.

Diana Brown, the daughter of founder Vera Legge (whose married name was Mrs Leed) ran the school until five years ago.

She said her mother had started teaching when she was about 16, but was unsure when the school itself was set up.

She said: “My mother was born in 1904, so it could have been going as early as the 1920s.

“But we know it has been going since at least 1937, because a woman called Mary Wallwork wrote about it in a book called Dance Don’t Walk.

“In those days it was called the Vera Legge Babes, but she was too tall to be a ‘babe’, so my mother arranged for her to dance in the chorus of a panto- mime they were working with.

“About 3,000 girls must have passed through the school over the years, so it would be nice to properly mark that.”

Mrs Brown remembers stories of her mother setting up the dance studio as a teenager.

The young dancer’s mother was not impressed with Vera’s passion for dance and tried to discourage her.

But she rounded up children from Jericho and taught them ballet and tap in the cellar of the family’s boarding house in Little Clarendon Street.

l If you know when Vera Legge set up her dance school, call Jo Walton on 07778 605291.

awilliams@oxfordmail.co.uk