Contact Details:
Cllr Mrs Elizabeth Shields
Firby Hall
Firby
York
YO60 7LH
Elizabeth Shields currently represents Norton East. She established the Environment Working Party to emphasise green issues. She is a former MP and Chairman of Ryedale District Council, champions local housing for local people and strongly supports the building of a new sports centre.
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Apart from a major interest in politics, Elizabeth has spent much of her life so far in education. Born and brought up in the south of England, she attended the local village school and then went on to Whyteleafe Grammar School for Girls in Surrey. After qualifying as a teacher, she studied and graduated with honours in Classics at University College London and some thirty years later gained her M.A. in Medieval Studies at the University of York. She currently teaches Latin part-time in further and higher education in York.
She enjoys travel and managed to combine this with education when she accompanied a group of Sixth Formers from St.Swithun's School, Winchester, on a trip to Venice and the Mediterranean, visiting Athens, Beirut and Damascus during the 3 week trip. During the eighties she also took two groups of students from Malton School to Rome and Sorrento , in addition to
accompanying members of the French staff to Sangatte in northern France. More recently she has been to Rome with groups of adults interestedin the ancient history of the 'Eternal City' , which is her favourite capital after London !
Nearer home, she became involved with the local PHAB : a group which worked with physically handicapped people, hence the name - Physically Handicapped and Able Bodied. When the Ryedale people merged with Scarborough, she supported the Ryedale group for helping Motor Neurone sufferers and during her time as Chairman of Ryedale District Council gave all the money raised that year to that charity.
For fifteen years Elizabeth was a governor of her local Primary School at Langton, which she very much enjoyed, being elected chairman on three occasions . She also had short term periods as a governor at both Norton College and then Malton School.
Generally she likes gardening, reading 'whodunits' and travelling abroad when she can afford it (!). A few years ago however, she took up ,rather more actively, an interest which had lain dormant since her early teens : football - NOT to play, but to watch the team which her father had supported. He taught maths and physics for many years at a large secondary school in Highbury, North London, and so for Elizabeth, having discovered at thirteen that he followed Arsenal, there was clearly no other team in which to take an interest.Thus, whenever she can get a ticket as a Red Club Member of Arsenal, she makes the journey to the Emirates, and accompanied by an equally enthusiatic niece, watches her favourite players in their superbnew stadium !
