Marjorie Hawkesworth

When Carters shop was no longer available as the Ben Rhydding Conservative Committee room on election days, she offered her kitchen to be used in its place – and for several years it was.

Marjorie, who has died aged 97, is likely to have inherited her political views from her parents. Although her father was a surface worker at the local Creswell pit and paid by the hour, he and his wife owned a detached house, sent two daughters to independent school and voted Conservative all their lives.

The tradition continues, for Majorie's daughter-in-law, Anne Hawkesworth, is leader of the Conservative Group on Bradford Council.

From her village school, Majorie won a scholarship to The Brunts School, Mansfield, and then qualified as a teacher at Lincoln Training College.

Eventually teaching at Worksop Central School, she met Stanley Hawkesworth, a science teacher there, and they were married in 1937.

Stanley joined the staff of Ilkley Grammar School in 1948 and they set up home in Ben Rhydding, where she remained for the rest of her life.

After raising two sons, she returned to teaching in the 1950s with a part-time post at Winton School, a small private school in a house at the end of the terrace where she lived. She started teaching full-time at Ben Rhydding Secondary Modern School in 1959.

Her role expanded after the West Riding Education Authority decided to up-grade its secondary modern schools.

After the curriculum expanded, Marjorie taught French to O-level, and continued to do so after the grammar school and the secondary modern school were amalgamated. She retired in 1974.

Her husband, known as Seth to most Grammar School pupils, died in 1994.

Marjorie is survived by their sons John and Peter.