ARTISTIC students from St Mary's Convent School took a Latin project one step further by entering a national competition.

Girls from the school have been studying Pompeii and the eruption of Vesuvius as part of their Latin lessons, and decided to enter a competition run by the classics department at Bristol University.

This contest explored modern reactions to the remains of people buried in the eruption of Vesuvius in 79AD.

Students Alexandra Widdowson and Rachel Legge said they had been helped by the school's head of art to design a canvas with a poem printed on it.

They said: "The final piece has many symbolic choices: the whole class, plus younger sisters, made casts of their hands from plaster, which were then arranged on the grey-painted canvas.

"These represented the citizens of Pompeii, desperately trying to crawl up out the burning ash of Vesuvius. Splashes of colour brightened the canvas and represented flames from the mountain itself, as well as the lava of the volcano.

"The dull grey colour of the canvas represents the ash which choked and suffocated the Pompeians. This ash hardened to a crust and so entombed the people within."

The project was sent to Bristol University classics department for judging.