Halley Stewart

Sir Halley Stewart (18 January 1838 – 26 January 1937) was an English businessman, journalist, philanthropist and Liberal Party politician who sat as a Member of Parliament (MP) from 1887 to 1895 and again from 1906 to 1910.

Halley Stewart was born at Barnet in Hertfordshire, the son of the Reverend Alex Stewart, a Congregational minister, one of ten brothers and sisters. He was educated at the schools his father ran, first in Barnet and later in Holloway a little further to the south. In 1865 he married (Jane) Elizabeth Atkinson from Upper Norwood in south east London. Elizabeth Stewart died in 1924. They had seven sons (only two of whom survived their father) and a daughter. One of Stewart's surviving sons was Sir (Percy) Malcolm Stewart Bt. (1872–1951), the brick and cement manufacturer. He too was a benefactor of the arts bequeathing many pictures, tapestries, furniture, and objets d'art to the National Trust. One of Halley Stewart's grandsons, Ian Stewart followed him into Parliament, albeit as a Conservative rather than a Liberal.

Stewart followed his father in preaching the Christian message, although he was never ordained as a minister. From 1863–1874 he was the pastor of Croft Church, Hastings in East Sussex and from 1874–77 of Caledonian Road Church in Islington, north London.

Stewart started his working life in banking and for some years was employed in a London banking house, Robert Davies and Co. in Shoreditch as a clerk. He then worked as a clerk in a coal factors and at Smith & Co. brewers in Hastings. In 1870, Stewart set up a business venture, Stewart Brothers and Spencer, oil-seed crushers and refiners based in London and Rochester in Kent. He sold this company in 1900 and transferred his business interests to the manufacture of bricks, first through the firms of B J H Forder Ltd. originally a small works on the Gault at Westoning, later taking larger premises at Wootton Pillinge, later renamed Stewartby after the Stewart family. In 1923 Stewart merged Forders with the London Brick Company, of which he eventually became the vice-chairman.

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