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Laurel & Hardy statue finds a home

...four years after it was made

Council chiefs have finally found a location for a bronze statue of Laurel and Hardy – four years after the sculpture was finished.

The £60,000 tribute, paid for by fans of the duo, has been in storage while a suitable site was found in Ulverston, Cumbria, where Stan Laurel was born in 1890.

South Lakeland Council has now confirmed it will be installed outside the Coronation Hall theatre in March, as part of a revamp of the town's County Square in 2009.

The statuee, created by sculptor Graham Ibbeson, has the pair leaning against a working lamppost with a dog yapping at their feet.

The delays mean Ulverston isn’t the first British town to have a statue of Laurel, as his niece Nancy Wardell unveiled a bronze in Bishop Auckland in August. The comedian’s family moved to the County Durham when he was a youngster,

Ibbeson also created the Eric Morecambe statue, which was installed in Morecambe, Lancashire, in 1999.

Here’s the unveiling of the Bishop Auckland statue: