IT WAS not quite the sort of summer visitor that you would expect in your parish church. The Vicar of Trinity, in Ossett, Wakefield, Canon Paul Maybury, always offers a warm welcome to visitors and families, but he did not imagine that his invitation would be taken up by dinosaurs - including a fully grown and animated Tyrannosaurus Rex. (The woolly mammoth, on the other hand, was only a baby.)

He had been contacted out of the blue, he says, by a local dinosaur-costume-maker, Christian Christobel, who had just secured a contract to supply dinosaurs to Tong Garden Centre, between Bradford and Leeds; but, until he could deliver them, they were taking over his garden and house. Could Trinity Church give them hospitality?

Canon Maybury naturally welcomed them, and for two weeks they stayed in the church, to the delight of other visitors.