SUPPORT is building for one of the biggest Remembrance Day parades away from the Cenotaph in Whitehall.

Firefighter Arthur Lockyear, from Ushaw Moor, near Durham, is delighted at the backing he is receiving for next month's parade in Sunderland.

The latest show of support came from the Provincial Grand Lodge of Durham, the governing body for freemasons between the Tyne and Tees.

Molly Johnson, the Royal British Legion representative on the parade committee, and Mr Lockyear, the organiser, were presented with a cheque for £500 by freemasons' benefit committee representative Gilbert Crossley at an event in in Sunderland.

Mr Lockyear said the money would be earmarked to improve the musical input for the act of remembrance.

He said: "We are lining up a fitting musical side to the parade, and we are fortunate enough to have the services of Newton Aycliffe Pipe Band and Gateshead Brass.

"Some of the money will be used to buy sheet music to play on the parade, to reflect as closely as possible the music played at the big ceremony at the Cenotaph at Whitehall."

Guests at the event on Sunday, November 9 will include five Chelsea Pensioners, a detachment from the Coldstream Guards and six troopers and a trumpeter from the Household Cavalry.

Mr Lockyear said he believed it would be the only Remembrance Parade outside Westminster to have a Household Cavalry trumpeter to play the Last Post.

He said: "It's quite a feather in our caps.

"We try to make as much of the occasion as we can for our veterans from the world wars, to show that there are many people in the region who have not forgotten what they did for all of us."

Mr Lockyear said other shows of support had come from across the political divide, and also praised "a marvellous gesture" from the Mowbray Park Hotel, in Sunderland.

Hotel bosses offered to put up the Chelsea Pensioners over the Remembrance weekend free of charge.