St Peter’s School York: 45-Space Virtual Tour with Campus Map

St Peter’s School in York was founded in AD 627 and is one of the oldest schools in the world. Today it is a boarding and day school for pupils aged 2 to 18, in extensive grounds close to the River Ouse. We first built its virtual tour in 2021, and in 2026 we rebuilt it with a new interface: 45 spaces from the Nursery to the Boat House, the school’s illustrated campus map as the way in, a route planner, four languages and a full set of accessibility settings.

The tour is one of our bespoke 360 virtual tours, designed from scratch in the school’s crimson and gold. Below we walk through each feature and why it is there.

The illustrated map is the way in

The school already had a fine illustrated map of the campus, and it makes a better menu than any list. The welcome screen’s main button, “Explore the campus map”, opens it full screen with every space as a numbered pin, colour coded by part of the school: Ages 2 to 8, Ages 8 to 13, Ages 13 to 18, Sport and rowing, and Boarding. A visitor can see at once how the site fits together, from the Nursery and Clifton Courts to the Boat House on the river and the Forest School at the far edge of the grounds.

Choosing a pin opens a small card with a photograph, the name of the space and a line about it, and a “Step inside” button takes the visitor into the 360. A list beside the map shows every space with a thumbnail, and a “Zoom to a part of the school” control narrows the map to one age group or area. The same map is one tap away from every scene, so a visitor is never more than a moment from seeing where they are.

45 spaces, grouped the way a family thinks

The spaces are grouped by age range rather than by building, because that is how a parent looks at a school: 8 in Ages 2 to 8, 10 in Ages 8 to 13, 16 in Ages 13 to 18, 4 for sport and rowing and 7 for boarding. Inside each scene a single “About this space” hotspot opens a panel written for that room: the historic School Chapel at the centre of school life, used for weekly services and as a rehearsal and performance space by the Music Department, or the Horseshoe, the impressive 19th century buildings that greet every visitor to the senior school.

A bar at the foot of each scene shows the number, the group and the position within it, with previous and next buttons, About, Campus map, All spaces and Plan my visit always to hand. Where a space is shown as a photograph rather than in 360, the school’s own stills sit in the same structure and are marked as photographs.

All spaces at a glance

The All spaces panel shows the whole school as a grid of photographs, grouped by age range, with filter chips along the top and a search box. It keeps count of progress too: “4 of 45 explored”, with the space the visitor is in marked “You are here”, so a family can see what they have looked at and what is left.

Plan my visit

Not every family wants to see all 45 spaces, so “Plan my visit” builds a route. The visitor chooses what interests them from nine options, from Nursery and early years, Ages 8 to 13, Senior school and Sixth Form to Boarding, Sport and rowing, Music, drama and art, Science, design and cookery, and History and the Chapel, and the tour puts together a short route in a sensible order and says how long it will take. Choosing Boarding, Sport and rowing and History and the Chapel, for example, gives 20 spaces in about 17 minutes. A “Your visit” bar then walks through the route one space at a time, with an End visit button to go back to exploring freely.

Boarding, shown properly

Boarding is where many families make up their minds, so the tour shows it in full: the Wentworth living room, the Manor kitchen, the Linton games room, the Rise and Manor dormitories and shared and single bedrooms in Dronfield. They sit in their own part of the map and their own filter, and in the Plan my visit route for anyone who chooses Boarding.

Four languages

A language button at the top switches the tour between English, Simplified Chinese, Spanish and French. Everything changes, not just the welcome: the menus, the map, the panel text and the route planner. For a school that recruits families from around the world, it means a parent can read about the Chapel or the boarding houses in their own language while looking at the same scene.

Read aloud, text version and accessibility settings

Each space has a Listen button that reads its name and description aloud, and a setting that does so automatically on arrival. The accessibility panel also offers three text sizes, a high contrast mode with solid panels, an easy-read font with more space between letters and lines, larger hotspots and map pins, and a reduce motion setting that removes animated effects. A complete text version of the whole tour lists all 45 spaces with their descriptions and a “View in 360°” link into each one, and the keyboard controls are listed in the same panel.

Visit us

A “Visit us” button at the top of every screen opens a panel with a map of the school at Clifton, York, and direct links to arrange a visit through the school’s online form, to admissions by phone and email, and to the school’s pages for open events, how to apply and getting here, plus directions. A family that has just fallen for the Chapel does not have to go looking for the next step.

Built for St Peter’s, editable by St Peter’s

Like all our bespoke tours, this one was designed from scratch for the client, and the map, the route planner and the four languages are specific to a school that has a campus to explore and families to welcome from many countries. It is hosted by us with no yearly fee, and the optional CMS can let the school update the text of any space, swap a photograph or change a link without coming back to us.

If you run a school, college or campus and want a tour that works the way a visitor thinks, talk to us about a bespoke school tour. Every tour is quoted on the plan, with no travel charges in mainland UK.