FORMER mayor and long-serving Ramsbottom councillor Evelyn Waite has died in hospital aged 82.

Mrs Waite, of Park Avenue, Ramsbottom served the town for 21 years as a Conservative councillor, but was also widely known and respected for her charity work and nursing career.

She died in Fairfield Hospital on Tuesday, and is survived by her husband Harold, daughter Anne and son-in-law Derek, and grandsons Alan and David.

Mrs Waite was born in Hayes, Middlesex, but moved north in 1946 with her husband, Edenfield man Harold Waite. She was a nurse at Bury General Hospital, then district nurse for Ramsbottom and Summerseat for 14 years, before becoming deputy matron in 1969 at the former Aitken Sanatorium. When that closed, she was a senior ward sister at the old Robinson Kay Home. Her nursing work twice took her to Buckingham Palace.

She was the first woman chairman of Ramsbottom Conservative Association, which she joined in 1948, but it was not until 1974 that she was elected to the new metropolitan borough of Bury. She was immediately made chairman of the leisure services committee, eventually becoming Mayor of Bury in 1986/87, before losing her seat in 1995.

She was Captain of St John's, Shuttleworth Girl Guides and founder president of the Shuttleworth WI. She was instrumental in setting up Ramsbottom Cottage Hospital League of Friends and starting the WRVS meals on wheels service in Ramsbottom.

The funeral is on Monday at 2.30pm at St John's in the Wilderness, Shuttleworth, followed by cremation at Burnley crematorium at 3.30pm. Family flowers only: donations to the Arthritis and Rheumatics Council via funeral directors Booth and Wolstenholme in Ramsbottom.