A MESSAGE for a future generation to read has been buried in a town centre - along with a 106-year-old good luck note.

Middlesbrough Mayor Ray Mallon has called on the future to judge the aesthetics of a £5m civic square currently planned for the town, incorporating a fountain with 100 water jets and lawns, in front of a £19.2m modern art gallery.

He and his council executive also propose to demolish 1,500 older terraced houses in nearby streets.

Mr Mallon says in a note buried in a time capsule: "Change is usually controversial and you, the future generation, will be the best judges as to whether the steps we took in the early years of the 21st Century were successful and led to Middlesbrough being a better place.

"I don't know when writing this whether this bottle will be found in 100 years or 1,000 years, but we hope that Middlesbrough and its people are still healthy and prospering."

His note was buried with a Victorian time capsule unearthed last year when a statue of industrialist Samuel Sadler, one of Middlesbrough's founding fathers, was moved to allow work on the new civic square to go ahead.

Buried under the plinth of the statue, workers found a sloe gin bottle, with its glass stopper intact, containing what might have been a stonemason's business card with a hand-written message on the reverse and a coin dated 1899.

The old message in a bottle was found and reburied, together with Mr Mallon's few lines, only yards away from Claes Oldenburgh's Bottle of Notes sculpture in the town centre.

The old and new messages were placed under the same statue by workers from Miller Construction, who are carrying out the town centre project.