Obituary: Herbert Tindall, former Scarborough Mayor

Mr Tindall was also a former Mayor of the Scarborough borough and an honorary Alderman.

He had been a long-serving member of both the Scarborough authority and North Yorkshire County Council, as well as serving as vice-chairman of the park authority, chairman of the county council’s Yorkshire coast and moors committee and as a jury member and foreman of the historic Danby Court Leet manorial court.

He knew the place that became the national park better than anybody, said Jim Bailey, the current chairman of the park authority.

As an elected Conservative representative, Mr Tindall did not always follow his party’s line and refused to shy away from controversy.

When he found himself at the centre of a row between the Magpie fish and chip restaurant in Whitby and the county council over queues on the resort’s pavements, he set about brokering a solution in the glare of the national press.

During the foot-and-mouth outbreak in 2001, he offered farmers hit by the virus “sympathy and support” to connect them back into the community. And a few years later when the moors became threatened by under-grazing, he highlighted the way “sheep act as lawnmowers”, saying the heather moorland would otherwise “disappear under silver birch and conifers”.

He is survived by his wife, Annie, with whom he would have celebrated his diamond wedding anniversary next month, and by four children, 11 grandchildren and 12 great-grandchildren.