A FORMER Lady Mayoress of Darlington has died aged 103.

Margaret Adamson was Lady Mayoress at the age of just 22 during her father Councillor Joseph Waters’ term in office in 1934/5 following the death of her mother Harriet.

Mrs Adamson was educated at Polam Hall School but left Darlington in 1937 when she married Dr Richard Adamson and moved to Leyburn where he served as the area’s GP for 38-years.

In those early days the couple’s front room was the surgery, the hallway the waiting room, and Mrs Adamson acted as her husband’s pharmacist; making up the medicines which were defined by colour.

Her daughter Elizabeth Bartlett said that music was her “great passion” and the couple lived a simple, traditional life enjoying their shared pleasures of the countryside, walking and holidaying in the UK.

Mrs Bartlett said: “My father sang well and she would play the piano, they would enter tournaments and we all had to learn to play instruments.

“She was a good cook and very generous; always making things for us and all the good things about her we have taken with us.”

Together with her husband, Mrs Adamson was an active member of the Wensleydale Tournament of Song (the Wensleydale Festival of Music and Speech) for very many years, hosting the adjudicator, acting as accompanist and competing in her own right.

She was an accomplished pianist, and continued to play daily into her nineties.

The Adamsons were also members of Leyburn Methodist Chapel, where they sang in the choir.

Dr Adamson died in 1997 and Mrs Adamson spent her last years in the Coach House Nursing Home in Ripon and died on Monday (November 16).

She leaves behind her two daughters, Elizabeth and Catherine, who both live in Harrogate, seven grandchildren and eight great-grandchildren.

Her eldest daughter Christine, who lived in Essex, died in December last year aged 74.

Mrs Adamson will be cremated in Darlington followed by a service in Leyburn Methodist Chapel, with the dates to be confirmed.