A Senior York councillor was found dead with a head injury at the foot of the stairs at her home after a "happy evening" out.

An inquest heard that Carol Wallace had 274mg of alcohol in 100ml of blood when the tragedy happened.

Coroner Donald Coverdale yesterday recorded a verdict of accidental death caused by the head injury.

Coun Wallace's husband, City of York Council leader Rod Hills told him details of their evening out together on December 18, hours before her death. The couple had shared a bottle of wine with a meal and back home had drunk two more glasses of wine each as a nightcap.

Then, in the early hours of December 19, he found his wife collapsed with a head injury.

"She had taken a tumble down the stairs having consumed some alcohol," said Mr Coverdale. "There would be a significant degree of unco-ordination.

"It may be, I don't know, that the alcohol contributed to an unsteadiness that caused her to fall downstairs, which is unfortunate. It was an upsetting end to a happy evening."

Coun Hills said the couple had met up at the Mansion House for a council meeting. Afterwards they had a drink with other councillors at a pub before the couple had their meal together. Giving evidence quietly but clearly, and at times answering the coroner's questions by silently shaking his head, Coun Hills said his wife showed no signs of being affected by the alcohol when they returned home to Huntington Road, York.

Asked whether he himself had been affected by the wine plus the nightcap, he replied: "I wasn't conscious that I was affected, but I suspect that I was."

He went to bed slightly ahead of his wife, who stayed downstairs for her usual "private, quiet" time at the end of the day.

Coun Wallace was councillor for Bishophill and executive member for economic development at the time of her death. She was also a lecturer in language and linguistics at the University of York.

Updated: 10:32 Friday, June 22, 2001