In the 1850’s workmen in Wortley near Armley Gyratory found some strange bones whilst digging clay for the local brickworks. The bones were so large and unusual, that some of them were taken for review to Henry Denny, who was the curator of a small museum, then on Park Row run by the Leeds Philosophical Society.
Denny identified the bones as those of a hippopotamus and visited the site to see what else could be found. On arrival at the site in 1851, he quickly uncovered a number of other bones, ending up with the bones from 4 hippopotami, as well as bones from a woolly mammoth and a huge Ox, known as an auroch.
The workers were also incentivised to dig more carefully and look out for further bones. A year later in 1852, two more hippopotamus skeletons were found at the same site.
Making a stir…
The find captured the publics imagination and the story of the finds didn’t just make the local press, but the national papers too.
“For generations it’s been the city’s most famous prehistoric peculiarity”
There had been finds before from this era in Yorkshire, such as elephant remains from outside Market Weighton and Hyaenas at Kirkdale Cave, but the Armley find was very significant due to the amount of bones found per specimen as well as the wonderful levels of preservation.
Denny identified the hippo as a sub species known as Hippopotamus Amphibius, otherwise known as the Great Northern Hippopotamus. He went on to present a paper to the British Association for the Advancement of Science in 1953 explaining that the long extinct species would have lived in the area over 100,000 years ago.
The bones from Armley are still the most northerly specimens of their type found in the UK.
What were the hippo’s doing in Leeds?
There was much debate as to the age of the bones and their date, as well as how they had got to the site. Denny had originally thought they could possibly date to Roman times.
He later revised his assumptions to much earlier. This was backed up when more recently the bones have been dated to 130,000 to 117,000 years ago, during a warm interglacial period.
These periods of warmer weather happened during the Pleistocene, when hotter weather caused ice sheets to retreat and melt, when the climate became much warmer. The last interglacial period was known in Europe as the “Eemian Period” or "Ipswichian Era" and corresponds to approximately 130,000 to 115,000 years ago, the same date as the Hippo bones.
This period saw the ice retreat and temperate forests exist where Yorkshire is now. Over 15,000 years large animals moved North. These mega fauna included elk, narrow nosed rhinoceros, bears, wolves, cave lions, straight tusked elephants as well as the great northern hippopotamus.
Phil Murphy, from the University of Leeds' School of Earth and Environment explained “Leeds would have been just like Africa in those days – and the climate would have been exactly the same as hippos enjoy in that continent today. The earth has experienced some 24 periods of cooling and warming over the last 2.5m years. Will it happen again? Almost certainly, and if it is warm enough in Leeds in the future, the Hippos will return."
It’s hard to believe that only just over 100,000 years ago that wild animals that you would expect to see further south in places such as Africa would have roamed around Leeds!
In 1924, Professor Percy Fry Kendal described the ice age in Yorkshire as "a time when Yorkshire hills and dales were peopled with fierce wild beasts – when the hippopotamus wallowed in the river swamps of the Aire, the Ouse and the Ribble"
Bringing the Armley Hippo to life…
The bones were originally presented on tables at the Leeds Philosophical Society, but the bones were eventually moved to the new Leeds Museum at The Leeds Institute.
In 2008, 25 of the key bones were mounted by a taxidermist called James Dickinson. The skeleton of the Armley Hippo has been proudly on display in the Leeds Museum ever since.
The skull of a modern Hippo donated by Salford Museum now sits next to the much older Armley Hippo.
There is also now a pavement plaque in Armley to commemorate the find, but whilst the date listed is 1852, many people believe it should say 1851 when the first bones were found.
So next time you are in Leeds, whether to watch the famous Leeds United, visit the Henry Moore Sculpture Gallery or go shopping at Harvey Nicholls, just remember 130,000 years ago it wouldn’t be humans you would meet but Hippos, Lions and Rhino’s – perhaps this is why the rugby league team has the name Leeds Rhinos!