THE tables are laid and napkins are arranged neatly in wine glasses as lunch guests start to arrive.

Young waiters move between the tables making sure guests have everything they need and asking whether they have any dietary requirements.

But this is not a restaurant, it’s a regular lunch club run by staff and pupils at The Ridgeway School and yesterday, for the first time in weeks, it was almost a full house after a “Come Dine With Me” invitation was issued to older residents of Wroughton.

Design and technology teacher Anne Sheppard said the club started around a decade ago as a way of connecting pupils with older residents of the village. “We just thought there wasn’t enough interaction between the school and the local community so we thought we would put on a lunch and do it every month,” she explained.

“Sometimes these people have not spoken to another person for a couple of days,” she said. “Some of them go to other clubs in Wroughton, but they have got used to coming here and they really enjoy it.”

Rosemary Cairns was the teacher who set up the programme as experience for the year 10 and 11 students who were learning catering.

Currently it was year 8 pupils who were acting as volunteer hosts and waiters. “The aim is really to get the older residents to come into school and for the younger people to talk to them and maybe make new friends,” she said.

One resident, Eric White was a regular from the beginning until his death last November aged 101.

Joyce Seal, aged 80, had been a regular since the beginning around nine years ago. She only lives a couple of doors away from the school and Anne enlisted her help in spreading the word among the older residents of the village.

“Members were dwindling. We were down to about 15,” she said. But yesterday all the tables were full and extra places had to be laid because so many diners arrived, bringing their appetites with them. Fellow guest Alan Stevenson added: “It’s nice meeting other people of a similar age and it makes you get out instead of sitting in your armchair.”