CHRISTMAS is always a time for double celebrations for a couple who celebrated their Diamond Wedding anniversary yesterday.

Arthur and Ethel Shepherd, from Leeholme, who married two days before Christmas Day 1944, are enjoying a week of parties and family gatherings.

They were 16 when they met at a dance in South Church, near Bishop Auckland, and 21 at the time of their wedding in St Andrew's Church.

Mr Shepherd worked as a miner in four south Durham collieries while his wife did wartime munitions work at Aycliffe. After a quarter of a century in the pits, Mr Shepherd moved to Cummings engineering, in Darlington, before working as caretaker at Coundon Primary School.

The couple are active members of St James's Church, Coundon, where their marriage was blessed on Sunday.

Mrs Shepherd said: "We are a close family and we laugh a lot. We have some very happy times."