Tribute paid to Bridlington’s Elizabeth “Liz” Walker

Elizabeth “Liz” Walker, was a talented wax sculptor, costume creator and signwriter and also founder of one of Bridlington’s largest nightclub and restaurant complexes in the 1980s.

She was born Elizabeth Ann Naomi Lenthall in Bridlington’s Avenue Hospital, on May 8, 1952 to Betty May and Robert Anthony Lenthall, who had re-settled to the town after the War, during which he had served with the RAF. In 1970, Elizabeth met Brian Walker, whose family of showmen had also long settled into the resort, and in November 1974 they married.

The couple had been involved in Hull’s early innovative audio-visual Scene One/Scene Two Nightclub but, in 1975, they had an idea for creating waxworks attractions together, at a time when a new resurgence in the medium was happening in Britain and America. By the time their son, Wes, was born in 1977, the couple had opened the first Walkers Tussauds Waxworks on Bridlington’s Royal Princes Parade.

The waxworks enjoyed very successful first seasons, the proceeds from which were pumped back into the resort and into expansion. In 1979, Elizabeth and Brian ventured to London, where Walkers Tussauds was responsible for creating The Palladium Cellars for noted producer Michael Carreras in the West End, and to Blackpool, where they opened The Movie and Television World of Wax, all before 1980.

Elizabeth was the unsung element of their partnership, being adept at sculpting the wax crania of the famous, using her preliminary drawings and paintings, then making the final facial casts. She also created the vast array of costumes; crafted many of the intricate and authentic props and set-pieces; painted the backcloths and publicity artwork, and did the grand signwriting, at first from their original workshop in former stables behind Bridlington Harbour in Garrison Street.

The creations were exported to many countries around the world. Throughout this busy epoch, Elizabeth remained a devoted housewife and mother.

Over the years, the couple also restored several old buildings in which to authentically house their projects. In 1980, they used the proceeds of this early success to open Mountbattens Nightclub and Restaurant Complex, on the Promenade, at the time the largest premises in Bridlington under one roof, before it later gave up territory to Joyland (today’s Forum), next door. It also comprised a discotheque-nightclub, and a theatre.

At the same time, the Walkers gained British Museum co-operation in the mounting of their Treasures of Tut-Ankh-Amun Egyptian Exhibition, which was then able to augment genuine Egyptian artefacts with accurate facsimiles which Elizabeth created. It arranged its venues in cities across Britain.

Other ventures they launched in Bridlington included the OO7 Wetbikes, in 1982, and various tourist attractions across the North Foreshore, the last of which closed in the mid-1990s. During this time, they had brought a Chinese Terracotta Warrior to Britain, and after 1985 a variety of their waxworks exhibitions became established in places such as Scarborough, York, Tyneside, Amtree Park near Filey, and Whitby, with the opening of the historic White Horse Wax Museum in a 1622 coaching inn in Church Street, which had played host to Captain Cook, Sir Charles Dickens, Bram Stoker, and Wilkie Collins, among others.

Between the 1970s and 1990s, their creations were also seen in a number of feature and TV films, including the 1979 Dracula (a wax model of actor Frank Langella), Sphinx (1980), and The Bounty (1984). In the early 1990s, after announcing a shark attraction for Bridlington, the couple had attempted to start a tourist attraction with the abandoned complex of military fortress establishments in Malta, something which was later achieved by the island’s authorities without them.

By 1996, Elizabeth, together with her husband and son, had ventured to Spain with a new style of “Museo De Cera” attraction. This did not meet with success but, the following year, the Walkers embarked on their last project, The Fort Paull Visitor Centre & Armouries, near Hull.

This was the original incarnation of Fort Paull, a commercial proposition they put forward to the fort’s owner, Brian Rushworth, and took two-and-a-half years to create before launching in summer 2000. After her husband’s untimely death in late 2001, Elizabeth returned to Bridlington.

Though suffering the effects of osteo and rheumatoid arthritis, Elizabeth kept herself occupied with the creating of replica dolls’ houses, restoring old furniture, and with knitting and other pastimes, Elizabeth died suddenly in the early hours of October 24, of heart failure, following a very brief illness. She was 72.

Her son Wes, said; “I will always remember my Mum as the most unselfish person possible — I cannot recall a single instance of selfishness, and I never knew of an instance of where she put herself before anybody else.

“Both as my mother and as a friend, acquaintance or stranger to all else, she genuinely multiplied everything that was Good — in every grain she was given, she gave back in a multitude which was boundless in supply. I’m sure that this genuine fountain of Goodness in her was the reason she more or less stayed the same in appearance for nearly 60 years, regardless of how bad the times were to her or how she suffered with pain in later years, which usually etches itself on a person. She was a great conserver, also — she could always make something from virtually nothing.

“I was fortunate to work alongside her, later, and there wasn’t a time – if she was in the midst of constructing an edifice from timber and plaster, digging earth, or filling a sandbag – where she wasn’t immaculately made-up, elegant and very feminine among all the arduous masculine tasks she repeatedly did over the decades, which was done more out of the etiquette of showing respect to other people than to herself. She certainly gave me all of my capabilities and facets — every single one did she invest in me. And she was very professional in her conduct.

“We were close enough to know one other’s every thought, which we later learnt to be Frequency [the Religions call it the Soul, and the Sciences try to ignore it], and although we talked about Every possible thing over time, we could count upon our communication between one another to be unspoken, and we did.

“Although she preferred to laugh every day of our lives, from the moment we awoke, to the last word, her sense of humour was always pure in its simplicity — yet she was always deadly serious about all of the real things in existence in our entirely deceptive world at large.

“For me, she has been the Best Friend of all Best Friends on earth.”