AN ELLESMERE Port councillor is to become the first Mayor of the town to go on to be Sheriff of Chester.
Cllr Angela Claydon, who was Mayor in 2011-12, is due to be elected to the ancient office, thought to date back to the early 12th century, at the borough council’s annual meeting in Chester on Thursday.
She will exchange her former red robes as Mayor for the blue robes of sheriff in a ceremony at the Victorian town hall.
This council year, Whitby ward’s Bob Crompton became the first councillor not from Chester to hold the office, which is older than that of the city’s mayor.
The change follows the creation of Cheshire West and Chester Council with any councillor being able to hold the city’s civic offices of Lord Mayor, deputy Lord Mayor and Sheriff.
True to form, Cllr Claydon, a keen family historian whose forebears have lived in and around Ellesmere Port for more than three centuries, has discovered one of her ancestors has beaten her to the job.
“I am really looking forward to my year as Sheriff of Chester,” she said.
“It is a very old institution and one of my ancestors once took the role.”
She has traced a branch of the family back to 1700 in Handbridge, a suburb across the Dee from the city centre and once a salmon fishing village.
A former teacher, Cllr Claydon was elected to Ellesmere Port and Neston Borough Council in 1996 and served on several committees including planning.
She was vice chairman of leisure, personnel and environment and chairman of housing.
In 2008 she was elected to the new Cheshire West and Chester Council and is a member of the strategic planning committee and the Ellesmere Port housing panel where she is opposition spokesman on Ellesmere Port housing.
Looking forward to the coming year she added: “I am truly honoured to be offered the role.”
