CELEBRATIONS begin this weekend to mark the 150th anniversary of the founding of one of Glasgow's most celebrated schools, the former Our Lady and St Francis' Secondary, often known as Charlotte Street.

Hundreds of old girls and teachers, including some now living overseas, are expected to attend a reception and thanksgiving mass led by Cardinal Thomas Winning in St Andrew's Cathedral at 3pm tomorrow.

Set up in Monteith Row in 1847 by two young Franciscan nuns, who had come from France to found the first religious order in Glasgow since the Reformation, the school was the first Catholic establishment for girls in the country.

Its foundress, Mother Adelaide, died nursing cholera victims of the great epidemic of 1849, and shortly afterwards the school moved to its permanent site in Charlotte Street. As well as Our Lady and St. Francis', the nuns also went on to found Elmwood School in Bothwell and every evening walked to Anderston and back to teach illiterate factory girls.

A former headteacher, Mother Phillipa, chilled her pupils with the story of how she had walked to the gallows in 1923 with Susan Newall, the last woman to be executed in Scotland, who died clutching the heavy crucifix the headteacher wore every day.

The girls were also inspired by the tale of the school's first graduate, Miss Annie Conway, who won three gold medals for Classics at Glasgow University in 1912.

There was controversy when the school was forced to merge with the all-boys St. Mungo's Academy, because of the then Strathclyde Regional Counci's policy of discouraging single sex schools. Despite protests from parents and former pupils, Charlotte Street closed its gates for the last time on June 30th 1989.