SPECIALIST restoration work on a war memorial will be completed with the help of a £4,000 grant.

Thornaby's cenotaph has undergone extensive work on its lettering and has received structural pointing, at a cost of £16,000.

Now it has been announced that a grant of £3,900 has been secured for work, which has been planned since 2004.

The scheme involved Stockton Borough Council, Thornaby Town Council and the Thornaby branch of The Green Howards Association.

The restoration, by Historic Properties Restoration Ltd, included cleaning, re-pointing and re-lettering to the memorial itself, and Brambledown Landscapes carried out improvement work to surrounding fencing.

English Heritage, in partnership with the Wolfson Foundation, announced the cenotaph grant amongst a total of £100,000 for war memorials across the country.

They include Sheffield's spectacular monument in Barker's Pool, outside the city hall, designed in the 1920s.

Joy Russell, chairwoman of the war memorials panel of English Heritage, said: "We must make sure that our war memorials are properly looked after.

"Regardless of its scale, each memorial provides a physical focus for an individual community's acts of remembrance.

"This year's batch of awards is the largest ever, and we are very grateful to our partners at the Wolfson Foundation for their continued financial support of the scheme, and to the War Memorials Trust for running it."