A giant 300kg metal haddock is helping to keep Cleethorpes tidy.
Hammy the Haddock is a recycling bin for plastic bottles on the central promenade.
Last updated 22nd Oct 2020
The hand-made stainless steel fish was unveiled earlier this week, with an aim to keep the streets and beach tidy, especially during peak season, when some people chose to leave their rubbish around the resort.
More than 80 children joined a competition to name the giant fish. Eleven year old Lilly-Mai Halligan won the competition and named the sculpture in memory of her uncle, Bernard 'Buster' Hammond, who died in January. He was a well known figure across the resort after working for the Cleethorpes beach safety team for more than 30 years.
Lily Mai said:
“My mum told me and my two sisters about the competition and we discussed what we would name the fish.
“We came up with Hammy as every time we think of Cleethorpes, we think of uncle Buster and it will be nice to have something to remember all the work he did.
“He loved the beach so it will be nice to know he will be remembered for keeping the beach safe and now Hammy will help keep it clean and carry on his memory.”
The council, alongside sponsors and Blackrow Engineering worked to bring the 4 meters long, 1.2 meters wide and 1.7 meters tall to the central promenade, near the lifeboat station.
Ben Tiffney, from Blackrow Engineering explains how they bought the fish to life:
"More than 450 hours have gone into the making of the fish. Most of the fabrication and manufacture of the fish has been carried out by one of our skilled tradesman Logan Marklew, with aid from one of our budding apprentices Ryan Meggit.
“Because of the nature of the task, the design process was carried out in a totally different manner to how we would normally approach a job. First, our contracts engineer, Darren Jaines, hand sketched some concepts of how we were to build the ‘framework’ of the fish. This was then transposed into making a scaled model, for us to be confident of getting the ‘shape’ right. We then scaled this concept up.
“We laser cut oval shaped supports attached to a formed pipe that ran through the centre of the fish, once these supports where tied together with round bar, the central formed pipe which created it’s shape was then cut away as the body had its own strength, creating a hollow fish.
“We than added the scales to the body, formed from round bar, through trial and error we then created the fish’s face and head section, and cladded this with shaped round bar. The fins were laser cut and the eye’s where machined and added, and once we were happy with the fish’s overall height and position, we designed, laser cut and fabricated its mounting frame.
“The fish was then hand polished to create a smooth finish to help it survive the elements and also give the wow factor!”