WHEN South Ham councillor Gerry Traynor becomes the next Mayor of Basingstoke and Deane on May 15, he will be continuing a tradition that began in 1641 under a charter granted to the town by Charles I.

This new corporation included seven aldermen and seven burgesses, with a high steward, a recorder and a town clerk. The first of some 300 mayors was George Baynard, who carried out duties similar to those still undertaken today.

The mayor was elected on the basis of seniority – how long they had been on the council – although in 1778, two members were elected as mayor, which was due to a division in the corporation, and both of them fulfilled their duties for most of the mayoral year.

In 1835 a new Corporation Act was passed which allowed the town to have four alderman and 12 councillors from whom a mayor was elected. In 1882, a deputy mayor was allowed, to help out in case of illness or a busy schedule.

Under the Wards Order of 1959 the borough was divided into six wards (or areas) and allowed the council members to increase to six aldermen and 18 councillors.

In April 1974 the actual office of mayor nearly disappeared under the re-organisation of local government in Hampshire. Fortunately the town’s charter trustees, who consisted of district councillors elected from the former borough area, used their powers to appoint a town mayor (rather than a borough mayor), and this position is now secondary to that held by the chairman of the district council.

The local councillors serve a three-year term before having to seek re-election. They are not paid but can claim a fixed amount of expenses for attending meetings.

Most of them have full-time jobs with the result that much of their spare time is devoted to council work. They serve on the council’s five main committees, the meetings being held in the evening and are open to the public. The councillors also attend sub-committee meetings and working parties, as well as visiting people’s homes and other places to sort out a multitude of problems.

Upon being inaugurated as mayor, the chosen councillor has the help of the mayor’s secretary during the following year.

Margaret Payne, who fulfils that position at the Civic Offices, gives the councillor a guiding hand through all the events and functions for the following year, and deals with the mountain of correspondence and many telephone calls which the mayoral position entails.

The councillor receives a sum of money for the year’s expenses, which involves paying for a variety of items including travelling costs, such as visiting the European twin towns with which Basingstoke has exchanges.

Since 1641 there have been many cases of a councillor being mayor several times over his period of office. The person with the most mayoral terms was Thomas May – a member of the family who ran the Brook Street Brewery.

Between 1796 and 1837, he was mayor 11 times. His son John May, who was a great benefactor to the town, held the position six times, between 1893 and 1902.

During the Great War, Thomas Allnutt remained mayor from 1915 to 1919, and in the Second World War William Doswell remained in that title from 1939 to 1942.

The first woman mayor was Mrs Edith Weston, in 1937/38, then the next one was Miss Nellie Lawford in 1956/57.

In 1989/90, Mrs Margaret Weston (no relation to the previous Mrs Weston) became mayor, then in succession came Marilyn Tucker, Rose Wellman and Rita Burgess over the past three years.

Each mayor has picked a charity to collect money for, and one of the many beneficial funds was started by Margaret Weston in 1989, when she collected £170,000 for a hospice in the Basingstoke area. The outcome was the construction of the building next to Basingstoke hospital which was opened in 1992.

A few mayors in the past have been selected to receive Freedom of the Borough, and one such person was George Willis in April 1954, for his services to the town in providing Basingstoke with one of the county’s finest museums in 1931.

During a mayoral year, all sorts of incidents can happen and most of them are of an amusing nature, but back in the early 1960s the mayor was not amused when he was asked to wait at the Municipal Buildings for a team of students dragging a bedstead into Basingstoke from another town for charity.

He waited... and waited... then a phone message came through that the students had got their dates wrong!