Pride of lions raises £370k for new cancer centre

The lions were used to form a walking trail across Cheltenham and Gloucester over the summer

A pride of 35 colourful lions that formed a walking trail over the summer have sold at auction for £220,000.

The hand-painted sculptures from the Lions at Large art trail were sold at an auction at Gloucester Cathedral to raise funds for a new cancer treatment centre at Cheltenham General Hospital, via the Cheltenham and Gloucester Hospitals Charity.

A lion sculpture called Leon Leading - looking for the Ark, by painter and sculptor PJ Crook, fetched the single largest individual price when it sold for a winning bid of £30,000.

Organisers said every lion sold for at least £2,500 and the project as a whole had raised a total of £370,000 for the new treatment centre.

The 32 large lions and three cubs were dotted across 30 locations in Cheltenham and Gloucester between July and September, with thousands of people visiting them during the summer holidays.

The Big Space Appeal for the new cancer treatment centre has raised £9.4m of its £17.5m target.

"It will be a space that really welcomes patients at every step as they walk through it with spaces to decompress, natural light, a garden area, and support around them so they have wraparound support at every step," Richard Smith, associate director of Cheltenham and Gloucester Hospitals Charity, said of the centre.

Sam Morris said working on a lion sculpture helped her following her cancer diagnosis

Sam Morris, from Twyning, near Tewkesbury, was one of 30 UK artists commissioned for the trail and created the Kintsugi lion, inspired by the Japanese art form of fixing cracked or broken items with powdered gold.

On the day of her commission, Ms Morris was diagnosed with breast cancer, and said creating the design had been like "therapy".

Knowing how important the lion was to Ms Morris, her friends from Twyning fundraised to buy it and, with donations from other bidders, it will return to the village after being bought for £15,500.

Speaking about her neighbours' efforts, Ms Morris said: "I'm in shock about that because I know that they know how important this is.

"They're actually my gold seams."