JUNIOR school pupils helped re-enact one of the strangest episodes in the history of art.

Fifty years ago this month a unique and priceless installation by German-born artist Kurt Schwitters was lifted out of a remote rural barn and transported 100 miles on a low loader across England to Newcastle-upon-Tyne.

The whole barn wall, now valued at £15 million, is still on show at Hatton Gallery, Newcastle University. It cost £5,000 to move.

It had been constructed by Schwitters at Cylinders Estate, Langdale, shortly before his death in the Lake District in January 1948. Called a Merz Barn, it is the only surviving installation by one of the founders of the modern art movement.

For the re-enactment, 14 pupils from Langdale Primary School, in nearby Chapel Stiles, helped marshal a life-sized photograph of the wall through Cylinders estate.

It was hoisted in its wooden frame by a mechanical digger driven by local farmer Mike Edmundson on a sling and trundled down the same path as it took to leave Cylinders in October 1965.

Teacher Juliet Beston said: “The children were really drawn into the excitement of the re-enactment and it brought it home to them how difficult it must have been to do it at the time.”

The re-enactment pre-empted a The Kurt Schwitters Autumn weekend, themed Migrations & Reconnections.

Ian Hunter, director of Littoral Arts charity which owns Cylinders, said the seminar discussed the future of the Merz Barn estate and the legacy of Schwitters’s work.

A consultants’ report, commissioned by Littoral Arts with the backing of South Lakeland District Council, Arts Council England and the Granada Foundation, is due to report by the end of the year.

“We expect it to back strongly the reconnection of the Schwitters’ legacy across the North of England,” said Mr Hunter.

The 2015 Annual Kurt Schwitters lecture was presented by Tom Green, from Platforma & Counterpoint Arts, London. He showed short films showing examples of how the arts can respond to the refugee and migration crisis. Schwitters was a refugee.

A surprise guest was Andrew Brammall, who with Bert Walker, chiselled through the Merz Barn artwork 50 years ago.

He was shown a VR reconstruction showing the original artwork in place in the barn, as it was before he chiselled it out. "It's absolutely amazing, it has taken me right back 50 years," he said.

After the seminar there was a ceremonial reading of the names of the artists who were declared degenerate by the Nazis. These included Schwitters.