A TORCHLIT procession through the centre of Southampton ends the first year of the new millennium tomorrow evening from 11pm.

It culminates in a spectacular celebration of the city's heritage featuring a sound and light show and the lighting of one of a national network of beacons.

Southampton citizens are being invited to take to the streets of the Old Town for the day-long New Year's Eve festival based on the port's status as the Gateway to the World.

The day's climax is the procession from the Bargate at 11pm where revellers will be invited to carry home-made lanterns - or even battery torches - to create a carnival of light.

The procession will be led to the area on Western Esplanade in the shadow of Southampton's Medieval Town Walls, between the Quays Swimming & Diving Complex and the WestQuay Shopping Centre, which will form an arena for a sound, light and video show taking the audience on a journey through two thousand years of Southampton's history.

A pyrotechnic display and the lighting of the beacon will mark the New Year.

From midday tomorrow exhibitions, living history events and all kinds of entertainment can be enjoyed throughout the day in Southampton's Old Town.

Music events will be centred on a specially constructed stage on Western Esplanade and there will be music in Tudor Merchant's Hall.

The theme of the event is historic journeys which have started from Southampton's waterfront, including the departure of the Pilgrim Fathers for the New World, Henry V sailing to Agincourt and the Allied forces who used Southampton as a key embarkation point for the D-Day landings.

Workshops have taken place in the run up to the event where residents joined artists to make large lanterns depicting historic journeys. People are also being encouraged to dress up in historic costume.

Southampton is one of 32 cities that have won funding from the Millennium Commission to see out 2000 in style. The city council secured a grant of £60,000 to help fund Gateway to the World. Bargate Street, Castle Way and Bugle Street will be subject to a rolling road closure during the procession (from 11am-11:45pm). Western Esplanade was closed to traffic from late last night until Tuesday morning, January 2.