A TIRELESS voluntary worker who settled in Skipton 70 years ago, has died aged 96.

Florence Valentine Rowley died in Airedale Hospital on January 23. Known to all as Val, she was born in Birmingham in 1924. Her father was a councillor in the city, her mother a music teacher. She went to grammar school in Birmingham and hoped to train as a chemist, but was conscripted into factory work in WW2. After the war, on a Swiss holiday, she met her future husband Robert Geoffrey Rowley, a Skipton solicitor who later became a partner in the local law-firm Charlesworth, Wood and Brown.

The couple married in 1951 and settled in Raikes Road. They had three children: Anthony, Richard and Pamela.

Val was an active member of the Skipton Inner Wheel, and after her husband`s early death in 1987 she volunteered in Sense charity shops in the town and in the local branch of the Parkinson’s Disease Society. Her husband was a keen local historian and she presented much of his research material to Skipton Library, where a selection is on display in the online Rowley Ellwood Collection. She is survived by her son Anthony, daughter Pamela, grandchildren Elisabeth, Margareta, Gemma and Joanna and great grandchildren Travis and Ruby.