A FIVE-METRE high puppet is going on a tour to mark the 75th anniversary of a Sussex town.

The puppet called Aura was created by a Yorkshire-based theatre company and is visiting Crawley this week as part of her “odyssey” in the UK.

Her trip to the town started at Gatwick Airport today, greeting passengers arriving and leaving the airport, and will continue with an open top bus tour across Crawley from 11am to 3pm tomorrow.

On Saturday, the puppet’s journey up the High Street is set to be welcomed by a live band at the Brewery Shades, with The Comic Shop presenting a giant comic book to Aura made by people from the town.

Aura will also receive a giant library card as she gains membership of the local library and will be sung a lullaby written by mothers in Crawley and the Murmuration Arts theatre company.

Residents of the town will then bid farewell to the puppet at an event in Tilgate Park with live music and art from emerging artists in the town.

Crawley is one of only two places outside of Yorkshire that the puppet is visiting this year.

The puppet is part of a reinvention of the story of the Trojan Wars in Greek mythology, which saw a city ransacked after welcoming a wooden horse that had soldiers hiding inside.

Created by the Animated Objects Theatre Company, Aura is a young civilian survivor of the conflict.

While the area has been inhabited since the Stone Age and developed into a market town from the 13th century, Crawley was designated as a “new town” in 1947 as part of a government project to relocate people living in poor or damaged housing following the Second World War.

The town, now home to more than 110,000 people, missed out on being granted city status in the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee Civic Honours earlier this year.

Notable people from Crawley include rapper Akala, comedian Romesh Ranganathan, TV presenter Dan Walker, athlete Daley Thompson, and England manager and former football player Gareth Southgate.