A campaign has been launched to erect a statue of Dame Thora Hird in her home town of Morecambe.
The Bafta winner, best known for playing Edie Pegden in Last of the Summer Wine and for performing Alan Bennett monologues, died in 2003 aged 91.
A blue plaque already pays tribute to her career in the north-west seaside town, but a group of local heritage campaigners believe she deserves a statue. They have found a renowned Lancastrian sculptor to immortalise Hird, who is to be depicted sitting in a deck chair, with an empty chair beside her for people to sit on next to her and have their photo taken.
Peter Hodgkinson, who made a statue of the painter LS Lowry that props up the bar in Sam’s Chop House in Manchester, and another of the footballer Tom Finney outside Preston North End’s stadium, has agreed to take on the commission if Morecambe Heritage can raise £92,000 to pay for it.
He said his homage to Hird would depict the actor in her 60s: “That is how most people remember her, with her big glasses on.”
A statue of Eric Morecambe already graces the town’s prom, bringing sunshine to visitors who mirror his one-legged pose. Born John Eric Bartholomew, he chose the name of his beloved home town as his stage name.
Hird, who won a Bafta in 1989 for performing Alan Bennett’s solo piece A Cream Cracker Under the Settee in the original Talking Heads series on the BBC, was proud of being a Morecambe lass, never forgetting her roots. Famously loquacious, an interviewer from the Guardian once spent four hours recording Hird, stopping only because he ran out of tapes.
Christine Stebbing, the chair of Morecambe Heritage, said it had long been her wish to put up a statue of the actor in her birthplace. She said the council had given permission for the statue to be situated on the site of the Royalty theatre, where Hird was carried on stage at eight weeks old by her actor mother, and where her father was manager.
She told ITV: “This is the ideal place for the statue to be placed and the chief planning officer and others on the town team were in agreement. The statue will be a seated Thora in a deck chair with an empty one beside her for people to sit and have a photo.
“I have sourced a sculptor, Peter Hodgkinson, who has produced – among others – the Tom Finney Splash statue, which is erected at the Preston North End stadium in Preston, and the LS Lowry statue in Salford.”
Stebbing has set up an appeal on the crowdfunding website GoFundMe, having so far been turned down for grants.
Hodgkinson said he hoped Lancaster city council, which administers Morecambe, would contribute towards the cost.
A good statue would pay for itself, he said, adding: “There’s no better example of this than the Eric Morecambe statue. Within about a month of it being unveiled the council had taken the money it cost in parking fees. You had coaches full of Women’s Institutes and all sorts coming from all around the country to see it.”
