Georgina Curry

With her input and influence she gave the hotel “an almighty shake” when she arrived to run it in 1970, although few people knew at the time that within a few days of arriving she nearly left, as the task seemed almost impossible.

Michael Hutchinson, chairman of his family-owned hotel, once said of his managing director that he was thrilled that she stayed, remarking that he thought she had felt sorry for them. In a way she did.

In some ways she was ahead of her time, a trailblazer for women in industry. Hard working and direct she was at one time a main board director of Best Western Hotels, the largest hotel group in the world. She was the only director of Interchange Hotels at the time that voted against becoming an affiliate of Best Western because she felt they had lost their way.

It was a decision which a number of prominent business people have since said showed she was way beyond her time in her view. It also reflected her knowledge of the industry.

She had a knack of seeing almost into someone’s soul and consequently was able to choose people to work for her who became devoted to her, and to the things that were dear to her.

She sat on many committees locally and nationally where she was noted for her wise counsel, her advice always being well thought out and argued.

She was often asked about women working in the industry, and why boardrooms were not full of them?

She was a Fellow of the Hotel and Catering International Management Association, and for some time was one of only two women in the North of England who had that distinction.

Mrs Curry was born in Dumbarton, north of Glasgow, one of two daughters of Willie and Peggy Blaikie. Her father was a brewer who owned pubs and maltings in Glasgow and a number of small hotels, including one on the Island of Easedale in the Inner Hebrides.

Her mother, who was a Macbeth, died when she was 13, and her father died in her early 20s during her second stint in a sanatorium at Lochmaben. Mrs Curry twice suffered from tuberculosis in the days before the NHS, but her father managed to buy a supply of the then wonder drug Streptomycin through his trade contacts in America where he imported spirits for blending.

One small hotel owned by her father was in Creetown, Dumfries and Galloway, which both girls ran after their mother died.

Following her sister Moira’s marriage and her father’s death, Mrs Curry moved to Kendal to manage The Woolpack Hotel, starting a happy career with Vaux Breweries becoming their only senior female manager.

When she needed a new chef urgently, the head office in Sunderland sent Billy Curry, 11 years her junior, who soon became her husband.

With her typical quick wit she always said she invented toy boys. She described one of her lasting impressions of arriving in Ripon and going to parties with her husband, saying: “I could see people looking and thinking, what’s that young man doing with that old woman?”

Despite being devoted to her career and gaining immense satisfaction from it, she had many interests including being involved in saving Ripon Grammar School more than 10 years ago. She had a great enthusiasm for the city itself, as she did for the South of France and Portugal where she went to recharge her batteries.

She was an avid reader especially on current affairs and, even after losing some of her sight kept up through talking books and newspapers.

She also enjoyed racing and dogs, and loved the parties she and her husband threw at their Harrogate Road home which they restored. She is survived by her husband Bill and their only daughter Samantha.