Edward Wadham

Edward Wadham DL JP (22 May 1828 – 1913) was appointed mineral agent to Walter Montagu Douglas Scott, 5th Duke of Buccleuch in 1851 and later, steward of the Manor of Plain Furness. He kept detailed diaries throughout his adult life, now in the possession of the Cumbria Archive Service, many of which cover the growth and development of the town of Barrow-in-Furness, then in Lancashire now in Cumbria, England.

Together with Sir James Ramsden, Henry Schneider and Josiah T. Smith, and as three-times Mayor of Barrow-in-Furness, he did much to open up the iron and steel industries in Barrow, which grew from a tiny nineteenth century hamlet into the biggest iron and steel centre in the world, and a major ship-building force in just forty years.

Edward Wadham was born in 1828 at Frenchay Manor House, near Bristol, the fifth son of ten children of Thomas and Elizabeth Wadham.

His father Thomas Wadham (1796-1849) attended Wadham College, Oxford from 1817-1819, and was High Sheriff of Bristol in 1843, the same year Isambard Kingdom Brunel completed construction of the SS Great Britain in Bristol Harbour.

His grandfather, John Wadham (1762-1843) of Frenchay Manor House and Bristol Parade, had been from 1789 a director and co-owner with Henry Rickett of the Phoenix Glassworks at Temple Meads in Bristol, known as Wadham Ricketts & Co, which manufactured Bristol blue glass, and in 1820 was a director of the Bristol Floating Harbour Company.

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