LOVE has been the sole ingredient in the recipe for a long and happy marriage for diamond couple Leo and Connie Arnell.

As they celebrated their 60th wedding anniversary at their home in Trimdon Station yesterday, Mr and Mrs Arnell said that was all they had needed.

The couple met during the Second World War while both worked at the munitions plant at Newton Aycliffe.

Mr Arnell, originally from Hartlepool, had served in the Merchant Navy, but was discharged with a perforated eardrum and sent to work in the factory in 1944.

There he met the love of his life and they wed at St William's RC Church, in Trimdon Village, on December 29, 1945.

Mr Arnell, 81, worked as a bus driver, a miner at Blackhall and Trimdon Collieries and a driver for the National Coal Board, based at Horden, until his retirement.

He was also a club singer and performed on radio and in venues across the region and in Blackpool.

Mrs Arnell, 82, raised the couple's five children, Kathleen, Tony, Susan, Nicholas and Veronica, before working as a domestic at Winterton Hospital, near Sedgefield. Before the war, she worked as a nurse with people with mental illnesses at St Luke's Hospital, in Middlesbrough. They now have seven grandchildren and four great-grandchildren.