Liz Walker: 'Unsung hero' of Yorkshire seaside attractions dead at 72

The publicity and financial success led to expansion.

In 1979 Elizabeth and Brian ventured to London to create the Walkers Tussauds Palladium Cellars in the West End for the film producer Michael Carreras, and to Blackpool, where they opened the Movie and Television World of Wax.

Brian was the showman but Elizabeth the unsung hero of their partnership, adept at sculpting wax heads of the famous, from her preliminary drawings and paintings, to the facial cast.

She also created the vast array of costumes, crafted many of the intricate props – from Hispanic galleons to castle battlements and palace verandas – and painted the backcloths, as well as recording the ambient soundtracks and arranging the tableaux – initially all from a workshop in former stables above Bridlington Harbour.

Over the years, she and Brian also restored several other old buildings and fortresses in which to authentically house their projects, creations from which were exported around the world.

Elizabeth Ann Naomi Lenthall was born in Bridlington’s Avenue Hospital in May 1952 to Betty May and Robert Anthony Lenthall, who had come to the town from Sheffield after the war.

Elizabeth worked in a number of seaside businesses before leaving school. In summer 1967 she became manager of Fabians the Jewellers on Queen Street, and later of Shoefayre in Scarborough.

In 1970 she met Brian Walker, whose family of Yorkshire showmen had settled in Brid from Leeds, and in November 1974 they married.

The following year they unveiled their first waxwork, of the actor Richard O’Sullivan in the character of the York highwayman Dick Turpin.

It was the start of a long business relationship with the resort.

In 1980, following their London success, they opened Mountbattens Nightclub on the Promenade, at the time the largest building area in Brid, comprising a restaurant and theatre beside its then-fashionable discotheque.

At the same time, they mounted a Treasures of Tutankhamun exhibition, with genuine Egyptian artefacts alongside facsimiles created by Elizabeth.

It toured Britain before traversing Yorkshire via Leeds, Scarborough, York, Bridlington and Hull.

Elizabeth’s creations were also seen in several films and TV series, including the 1978 Dracula, Popeye and Butch and Sundance – The Early Years.

In the early 1990s, after she and Brian had announced a shark attraction for the Yorkshire coast before the Sea Life Centre was built in Scarborough, they attempted to start an attraction with the abandoned complex of military fortresses in Malta.

It later went ahead without them. A European-style wax museum in Spain also failed to take off.

Their last venture was an attraction at the Fort Paull armouries on the East Riding coast, in 2000. After Brian’s death in 2001 Elizabeth returned to Bridlington where she created large-scale replica houses and restored old furniture.

She is survived by their son, Wesley.