A DEAD whale might not be what you would expect to see in the middle of Hereford.

But in the 1970s, many Herefordians turned out to view just that, when Jonah the whale made his appearance in the city.

Members of our We Grew Up in Hereford Facebook group remembered seeing the very lage – and very dead – whale on display in the Country Bus Station car park behind the cinema on Commercial Road and on a trailer in St Peter’s Square.

“I recall seeing the thing as a 10- year-old, it must’ve been the early 1970s,” said Richard Sockett.

“Simply out of bounds these days, but quite normal then. You could smell it from the Kerry junction.”

“He absolutely stank,” said Maureen Morris.

And Alis Tair said he wondered what had happened to the unfortunate whale. “There’s a story to uncover there,” he said.

According to the Northern Echo, there are reports that in the early-1970s, a whale's travelling carcass was disposed of in a National Coal Board furnace in Barnsley but, more recently, there are stories that the body of a whale called Jonah has been found in a giant fridge on the border of Belgium and the Netherlands.

In 2019, it was reported that it had been bought by another showman was about to hit the road once more.

Perhaps it was a good thing that the pandemic struck when it did and the poor whale has been able to rest in peace.