There are many places throughout Cambridgeshire that look like they've stepped right out of Harry Potter, but few are as convincing as this amazing building in Peterborough. With a secret tunnel and hundreds of years of history, it's little wonder The King's School is known as the Hogwarts of Peterborough.
It's easy to get lost in the winding halls and staircases of my old school, but walking through the doors was almost exactly as I remembered it.
As part of Cambridgeshire Live's Peterborough Week, I've taken a tour to get readers inside this beautiful place.
A labyrinthine building
The main building dates back to 1885, when King's - full name King's (The Cathedral) School - was still a private school.
Until then it had been on the grounds of Peterborough Cathedral, but it needed more space and the current Park Road site was found.
As the school expanded, people came up with ways to link the buildings together, resulting in a maze or corridors and staircases.
It's full of unlikely things. There's a portrait of Henry VIII in the canteen, which was presented to the school by none other than Pizza Express founder Peter Boizot, an old pupil. And across the road the music department is in Madeley House, which was first lived in by a clergyman who was genuinely named Canon Ball.
There's also a clocktower from 1888, and until just a few years ago the massive timepiece was still wound every day by the caretakers.
Former headteacher Trevor Elliott, who thought he'd be at King's four years when he started but ended up being there for 40, took me on a behind-the-scenes tour of the tower.
As we climbed up some rather narrow and rickety stairs we were greeted by that musty church smell associated with historical buildings.
At the halfway point we stepped into the room behind the clock, but we kept going to the roof, which was worth it for the stunning views of the city centre.
But where King's has dizzy highs, it also has mysterious lows. I asked Mr Elliott about a rumour from when I was a pupil that secret tunnels linked the school to the Cathedral.
"There's no tunnels to the Cathedral, no tunnels to Madeley House, but there is a tunnel from the hall to science," he revealed.
One secret tunnel's better than none at all.
Hundreds of years of history
Of course the history of the school goes back much further than the current building.
King's is a school with an awful lot of history, dating back to 1541 when it was founded by Henry VIII as the Cathedral School to educate the cathedral choristers.
There was just one school room at the time, which still stands in the cathedral grounds with a plaque to mark it as the original home to King's.
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When the school relocated in the 19th century, it was almost moved to Thorpe Road, on the other side of the railway, but an accident on the tracks made governors reconsider.
King's lost pupils and staff in the First and Second World Wars, and memorials hang in the school's library and Peterborough Cathedral.
One former pupil who died in the Battle of the Somme, Daniel Moyer, etched his name into the schoool's tower. You can still see it there, among many other names of students who have come and gone.
The school was a private school for most of its life until the modern secondary school system was created in 1944. In response, governors decided to make King's a state school after the Second World War.
The modern school
King's still has close ties to its cathedral roots. As a Church of England school there are Cathedral services several times each year to mark church festivals or school events.
School assemblies involve hymns and prayers, and students are expected to carry their hymnbook on them at all times, usually in their blazer pocket.
Things are getting more modern though: when I arrived I was greeted by the energetic Scout, the school's new therapy dog in training. We certainly didn't have anything like that when I was there.
Mr Elliott told me he hopes the school can hold onto its identity "in a time when the amount of money that's coming into schools is declining."
He added: "There's lots of myths and legends which go with the school."
