Youngsters have spent the week investigating a mysterious alien spaceship found at Lacock Abbey on Sunday.

The wreckage, which consists of scrap metal, is inspiration for the village primary school’s literacy week and since the discovery its 70 pupils have been busy getting to the bottom of it.

The unusual project has seen pupils get creative learning how they could assist police with inquires if the spaceship was real, while also building replica rockets and writing news reports.

Teacher Ann White, whose class is writing the newspaper articles, said: “The project has really captured the children’s imaginations.

“All three of our classes at the school have been involved and we have even set up our own mission control centre back at school.

“A few of the children were a little sceptical about it at first as they didn’t think it was a real alien landing but now they are all getting very involved, although some are starting to realise it wasn’t real.”

As part of the literacy week project Mrs White’s oak class of nine and 10-year-old pupils have been interviewing villagers as well as staff at Lacock Abbey and helpful parents who have taken on the role of police officers.

Mrs White said: “It’s taken a lot of work but it has been a great thing to do as it has really helped develop the children’s skills.

“The idea came about following some recent Ofsted advice which said children should be encouraged to write for real purposes following a real event, so we came up with this idea which has gone really well so far.”