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Former mayor leaves £2.5m estate

From the archive, first published Friday 26th Jan 2007.

Former Oxford Conservative councillor Janet Todd, who died last year, has left £100,000 to the Royal Commonwealth Society for the Blind.

Mrs Todd, who died aged 88 on May 17, left an estate valued at £2,656,499 gross - £2,643,104 net.

Mrs Todd, of Foxton Close, north Oxford, left her estate mostly to relatives but also left £100,000 to the RCSB.

A spokesman for the society, which is based in West Sussex, said: "We do get donations from legacies, and this seems like a very large amount."

The former Lord Mayor of Oxford began her political career in the city in 1965, and in 2000 planned a comeback at the age of 83 by standing for the Tories in the county council elections, although she was not elected.

Mrs Todd, a mother-of-two, opposed the scrapping of middle schools in Oxford in 2000, and campaigned on a series of issues ranging from old people's homes to city centre pedestrianisation.

She arrived in Oxford in the 1960s when her husband, James Maclean Todd, became secretary of the Oxford and Cambridge Examination Board.

Mrs Todd was then elected to the Cherwell ward of the city council, winning the seat from the Liberal Democrats and embarking on a career in local politics lasting 32 years.

She first stood for the county council in 1977. Once elected, she lost a fight to keep a middle school open, but succeeded in saving a nursery school.

Mrs Todd's husband died in 1988. Probate has been granted to solicitor Stephen Matthews in Basingstoke, her son John, who lives in Beckenham, Kent, and daughter Margaret, who lives in Chiswick, London.

* A pensioner described as a "generous benefactor" of her village church has left estate valued at £1.5m.

Vera Greening, 85, of Long Furlong Farm, Sunningwell, died from serious head injuries on August 4 last year, 24 hours after being struck by a car at the busy junction of High Street and West St Helen Street in Abingdon.

Pam McKellen, the vicar of St Leonard's Church at Sunningwell, said last year that Mrs Greening was a generous benefactor to the church.

Mrs Greening died without making a will but left an estate valued at £1,550,277.