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The return of the Armley hippo
He lurked in the muddy waters of Armley thousands of years ago... and now he's about to get a summer revival.
The legendary 'Armley Hippo', whose bones are believed to be around 130,000 years old, is being brought back to life by this year's I Love West Leeds Festival for a unique history lesson.
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The mud-loving mammoths are the main theme of this year's event, which kicks off this weekend with a fun day at Farnley Hall Park.
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It's all in celebration of 'Hippopotamus amphibious', the animal whose bones were discovered 150 years ago in the heart of Leeds, at what is now the Armley Gyratory.
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In 1851, workmen digging clay in Longley's brick field, Wortley, discovered several huge, mysterious bones.
They were later identified by Henry Denny, curator of the Leeds Philosophical and Literary Society Museum, as belonging to the Great Northern Hippopotamus. The bones of the Armley hippo are now kept at the Leeds Museum Discovery Centre, but they have attracted renewed interest thanks to Jane Earnshaw, I Love West Leeds Festival organiser, and her team of volunteers.
The team have been making hundreds of plaster hippo mascots –
named 'Denny' after Henry Denny – and inviting people to decorate them.
"Lots of local people don't know the story of the Armley Hippo," explained Jane. "We thought this was a great way of injecting some life back into him.
Decorated hippos will be on display in the shop windows of Armley Town Street alongside six new hippo artworks by local artists.
The I Love West Leeds Festival runs from Saturday to July 25.
Visit www.ilovewestleeds.co.uk or call the festival infoline on 0787 058 1566 for more details.
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Weather for Leeds
Wednesday 08 February 2012
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