COUN Frank Barton has been invested as the town mayor of Carnforth by retiring first citizen Coun Sheila McNulty.

An incomer from Heysham at the age of six, Mr Barton was brought up on a farm that used to be behind the old Steam Town.

As a youngster, one of his tasks was to recover sheep that had strayed on to the estuary banks and fallen into gullies, and he remembers the film Brief Encounter being made.

For more than 40 years, he has been a landscape gardener and builder, but has never lost his contact with the soil and has a considerable allotment which he regularly works at.

Another of his interests since 1987 is as town crier for both Carnforth and Kirkby Lonsdale and he has hosted 13 competitions in his home town. Coun Barton is now a director of the Ancient and Honourable Guild of Town Criers.

For many years a member of the Carnforth and District Chamber of Trade and Commerce, he is now treasurer.

The new mayor is a founder member of the Carnforth and District Twinning Association and signed the twinning charter in Sailly sur la Lys, France, last year.