Joyce Craig-Tyler

The younger of two sisters, their mother Edith and their father Bill Briggs, she was born in Batley and went to college in Harrogate to learn catering, cooking, bookkeeping and other skills, including book binding and dressmaking.

In 1948, as a 23-year old, she went to work as housekeeper at the St Nicholas Hotel in Scarborough, operated by Jack and Jenny Tyler and their son Douglas.

It would become the largest privately-owned hotel in the UK.

Mr Tyler had come to the resort in the 1930s as a bricklayer working on the Odeon cinema opposite the railway station before meeting his future wife Jenny, who ran a six-bedroom boarding house.

They ended up moving into a shed at the bottom of their garden in order to release another room to let. Over the years, they kept moving up to bigger hotels, culminating with the St Nicholas.

After Miss Briggs joined the staff, she and Douglas became friends – such good friends that in 1950 they married.

In charge of housekeeping and reservations, and everything else that the owner threw at her while he concentrated on buying and selling hotels, the new Mrs Craig-Tyler was in her element.

Organising the staff and overseeing the refurbishment of the rooms, she was the one that made everything work, and thought nothing of working an 18-hour day in the conference season with 350 guests to look after and 100 staff to manage.

She was so good that Mr Tyler senior sent her across to a 300-seat restaurant he had on Vernon Road, which, in the summer season in the 1950s was packed with people arriving by coach, often serving 2,000 meals a day.

Mrs Joyce Craig-Tyler was independent, hardworking, capable and strong minded. Not afraid of confrontation, she could be as difficult as she needed to be.

Perhaps her independent spirit accounted for her love of cars and driving – which she did whenever she got the time.

In her youth she owned a Jaguar SS, and in later life the car that won her affection was a two-tone brown Rolls Royce which she would drive up to her retreat in Scotland, often taking Brandy, her pet bulldog and constant companion, with her.

She would party all night if given the chance, but went teetotal from 1958 onwards.

Her husband died in 1969, and two years later her father-in-law, the founder of the business, also died.

The forcefulness of Mrs Craig-Tyler’s character now came through when, despite crippling death duties and advice to the contrary, she took over the reins of the business, remaining in charge until 1985 when the hotel was sold.

She continued her father-in-law’s policy of ploughing profits into a sustained programme of modernisation which, with the day-to-day management of the hotel, was her consuming interest.

Apart from holidays, Wimbledon and the Grand National were the two annual distractions she always allowed for.

Her sense of humour ran to risque jokes, and she was defiantly politically incorrect, making outrageous statements and daring a challenge.

She loved to entertain. Her New Year’s Eve party at the St Nicholas was always a big event.

After retiring, she took up gardening, and became extremely accomplished at it.

Mrs Craig-Tyler is survived by her sons Nicholas and Jon, five grandchildren and a granddaughter.