A PRIEST who worked throughout the North-East has died aged 93.

Father Martin McBrien died from leukaemia at the Little Sisters of the Poor home, in Sunderland.

He was born in Darlington in 1910 and lived there for six years. When his father died, he and his brother and sisters went to live with grandparents in Ireland.

After he was ordained in 1935, his first appointment was as assistant priest at St Joseph's Church, in Stanley, County Durham, and later worked at Hartlepool, Sunderland, and Wallsend.

In 1951, he returned to Darlington as assistant priest at St William's Church, but moved to Newton Aycliffe, County Durham, in 1962 as the first parish priest of the newly-built St Mary's Church.

He worked there until 1967 when he moved to St Mary's, in Jarrow, before his retirement in 1987, when he went to live with his sister in Darlington.

His friend Cannon Alec Barrass said of Fr McBrien: "He was a very precise person and always very smart and a very happy man."

Fr McBrien's body will be received into St Augustine's Church, Darlington, at 7pm today, with requiem Mass at noon tomorrow.

He will be buried in the grounds of St Osmond's Church, Gainford, County Durham, where his brother, Father Philip McBrien, and sisters, Mary and Elizabeth, are also buried.