A FORMER Recorder of York and Judge at the city's Assizes has died at the age of 88.

Sir Roualeyn Cumming-Bruce was appointed Recorder of Doncaster in 1957 and the following year he became Recorder of York, a post he resigned from in 1961 because of his work in London as Junior Counsel to the Treasury (Common Law).

He became a Judge in 1964, the year he was knighted, and was Presiding Judge on the North East Circuit from 1971 to 1974 and a Lord Justice of Appeal from 1977 to 1985.

From 1954 to 1957 he was Chancellor of the Diocese of Ripon. Later he was a High Court Judge in the Family Division and afterwards in the Court of Appeal.

Known to some of his friends as "Spider" - after Robert the Bruce and the spider - he once turned down a professorship in China because he was to loath to miss a winter's hunting in England.

In 1955 he married Lady Sarah Saville, the youngest daughter of the Sixth Early of Mexborough, of Arden Hall, Hawnby, near Helmsley. She died in 1991.

The couple had two sons and a daughter.