The Duke of Westminster, Honorary Colonel of The Royal Armoured Corps, today pledged £10,000 to The Liverpool Pals Memorial Fund as part of a campaign to commemorate Liverpool’s World War One sacrifice.

At the campaign’s launch held at Liverpool town hall councilman Joe Anderson generously presented a cheque for £10,000 on behalf of Liverpool’s city council.

The charity hopes to raise £40,000 to create the memorial as a permanent mark of respect to the King’s Liverpool Regiment – nicknamed ‘The Pals’, who served in some of the bloodiest battles of the First World War including the Arras, the Somme and Passendale.

The preferred location for the memorial is Lime Street Station as many left from there for the last time.

The Duke of Westminster, who is patron of the Fund, said: “I’ve recently become a commissioner for war graves and commemorating our dead from World wars and indeed other conflicts actually makes us what we are, it’s part of our being.”

The Duke added: “Almost a century has passed and it is only right and fitting that the civic pride these men carried along the Western Front is reciprocated by the city.”

In 1914 Lord Derby told crowds enlisting: “This should be a battalion of Pals, a battalion in which friends from the same office will fight shoulder to shoulder for the honour of Britain and the credit of Liverpool.”