Huge Figure of Woman Carved

The north of England has a huge new attraction, after a giant figure of a woman appeared carved into the landscape near Northumberland. The 400m long artwork is called Northumberlandia, though is also known as ‘The Lady of The North', and is the brainchild of landscape sculptor Charles Jencks.

The figure took seven years to plan and a further two to build, and is said to be the largest landscape replica of the female body in history. It is made up of 1.5 million tonnes of rock, soil, stone and clay, all of which were by-products of a nearby mine, and together make the tallest point a massive 34m high.

It began life as part of the planning permission for the mine to be created on the site, and a spokesperson from the Banks Group mining company revealed:

"It cost £3m for us to create Northumberlandia. We wanted to give something back. When we end a project on a mining site we restore it. With this project we heard there was some local concern about a negative effect on tourism, so we decided to go one step further than usual and create a tourist attraction to leave as our legacy."

The sculpture will be officially opened today by Princess Anne, and members of the public and go and explore the piece from Wednesday onwards.

To get an idea of the work that went into building a sculpture of this size, watch the video below.

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