A COUPLE who met in the offices of a Darlington solicitor celebrated 50 years of marriage on Saturday.

Cliff and Joan Jones were married on February 9, 1952, in the town's now-demolished Greenbank Methodist Church, five years after first meeting in the late Stanley Walton's offices, in Bondgate.

Mrs Jones, who moved to the town from Hartlepool, looked after the books for the firm and her husband-to-be was employed by a chartered accountancy firm and visited to carry out audits.

Mrs Jones continued working at the solicitors' until 1954, when the first of the couple's two daughters were born. In 1953, Mr Jones started working for Dressers the printers, later moving to the Priestgate offices of The Northern Echo, from which he retired as a payroll supervisor in 1988.

The couple have four grandchildren and live in Darlington