A former headteacher has died at the age of 66.

Margaret Wellard died on Monday, March 16, suffering from Scleroderma and Raynaud’s disease.

Born in Hull, she trained as a teacher, specialising in music and drama, and took her first teaching job in her home city.

After this, she moved to St Andrew’s girls’ boarding school, near Malton, and then became headteacher at Langton Primary School, retiring in the late 1990s because of ill health.

Margaret’s favourite hobby was folk dancing and this was how she met her husband, English teacher Paul, who played the fiddle in the Wolders County Dance Band.

After a long courtship, the couple married in 1969.

Paul said that Margaret continued her hobby of folk dancing throughout her life, teaching maypole dances to the children at Langton Primary School and herself taking part in competitions from York to Scarborough with her award-winning dance troupe.

He said: “Margaret was a very intelligent woman and she always had a bright smile on her face. She was loved by everybody, wherever she went.”

Margaret was also a member of the White Star Band, playing the tenor horn, and in 2005, having already clocked up 36 years with the band, she became bandmaster.

A funeral service will be held at 1pm on Wednesday, April 1, at St Mary’s Priory Church, Old Malton. Cremation will be at Octon, near Rudston on the Wolds.