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Edinburgh Live
Edinburgh Live
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David McLean

Edinburgh outdoor market's famous giant pink King Kong and where it is now

For the best part of 20 years now, capital locals have been wondering what on earth happened to Ingliston's giant pink King Kong statue.

It's a question that's been bugging all of us who frequented the legendary Ingliston outdoor market back in the day.

Erected in 1976, the 18ft tall fibreglass statue was Ingliston's centrepiece and served as a convenient meeting point for market-goers until the market's closure in 2005.

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Operating each Sunday, the open-air market's hundreds of stalls and car boot traders attracted tens of thousands of bargain hunters from across Edinburgh and the Lothians and beyond.

Drawn by the rock bottom prices, it was said that up to 400 coach loads of frugal punters would come up from England every weekend just to visit the market, which sold everything from clothes, furniture and toys to domestic appliances and other household goods.

And keeping a watch over it all for almost three decades was a giant pink iteration of Fay Wray's old mucker - but whatever happened to him?

We've witnessed loads of Edinburgh's loved landmarks vanish down the years, but few have clocked up as many miles as Ingliston's lost King Kong.

The gorilla statue actually began life 300 miles south of Edinburgh in Birmingham. Originally painted in a bluish-grey, he was commissioned in 1972 as part of the nationwide Sculpture for Public Places Scheme.

When Birmingham's city council refused to purchase the statue, it was sold on to a local car dealer who briefly displayed it at his sales lot on the outskirts of the English city.

After a fleeting appearance at the Birmingham School of Architecture in the summer of 1975, Kong was once more used as the face of a car dealership - but his time in the auto industry was almost up.

In 1976, Kong caught the eye of outdoor markets entrepreneur Nigel Maby who picked him up for £12,700 through his company Spook Erections, which had already been running Ingliston for three years at that point.

During his life in the Lothians, Kong won over a whole new legion of fans. He was repainted on several occasions, including tartan and, latterly, bright pink, and became the icon of Ingliston Market.

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In 2004, Ingliston's owner Nigel Maby sadly passed away, and it was clear the market's days were numbered. After 32 years of operation, the Ingliston Sunday Market was brought to an end in September 2005.

Following Ingliston's closure, Kong remained with the Maby family and was re-erected at Skirsgill Auction Mart in Penrith. It was during this time that Kong began to deteriorate.

By 2011, amid calls for it to return to Birmingham, the statue was lying on its back in a muddy car park, but Lesley Maby, the wife of the late Nigel, declined all offers to buy it.

Kong's story, fortunately, does not end in the mud. In 2016, he was restored and repainted in his original colours for display in Leeds for an exhibition celebrating the legacy of the City Sculptures programme he had been created for all those years ago.

While there have been renewed calls from both Birmingham and Edinburgh for Kong to make a return, the statue remains cared for by the Maby family, who keep it as a memory of the deceased Nigel Maby. It was last reported as standing in Lesley Maby's garden in Cumbria and has stood there ever since.

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