Elephant sale raises over £200,000 for Ipswich hospice

A charity auction and trail of Elmer elephants has raised £261,500 for the St Elizabeth Hospice in Ipswich.

The highest bid was for the Castle on the Hill sculpture - a tribute to Ed Sheeran. It raised £10,000 and the Suffolk singer has promised to sign it.

There were 53 different elephants up for sale in an auction at the Corn Exchange.

Hero, the emergency Elmer, sold for £6,000. He was bought by 12 people who put in £500 each so he could be returned to the hospice.

In all there were 140 sculptures based on the Elmer character created by David McKee.

The Elmer trail ran until September and followed the ‘Pigs Gone Wild’ art trail in 2016, which attracted around 250,000 visitors to Ipswich

Click below to hear from Norman Lloyd, one of the organisers of the sale