Rowland Burdon (Sedgefield MP)

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For other people named Rowland Burdon, see Rowland Burdon (disambiguation).

Burdon's seat in County Durham: the Castle, Castle Eden.

Colonel Rowland Burdon, VD, DL, JP (19 June 1857 – 1 August 1944[1]) was an English landowner and Conservative Party politician from County Durham. He sat in the House of Commons from 1918 to 1922.

Early life and family[edit]

Burdon was the son of the Reverend John Burdon, from Castle Eden in County Durham.[2] He was educated at Repton School and University College, Oxford.[2] In 1887, he married Mary Arundell, the daughter of Wyndham Slade of Monty's Court in Taunton, Somerset.[2]

Career[edit]

Burdon was Lord of the Manor of both Castle Eden and Little Eden,[2] and lived at the Castle, Castle Eden.[3] He was appointed a Deputy Lieutenant of County Durham in 1900,[4] and served as High Sheriff of Durham in 1907.[3] He was also a Justice of the Peace (JP) for County Durham,[2] and after serving as Lieutenant Colonel commanding the 1st Volunteer Battalion of the Durham Light Infantry he became Honorary Colonel of the 5th Battalion[2] in 1911. [5] He was awarded the Volunteer Decoration in 1898.[6]

At the December 1910 general election, Burdon unsuccessfully contested South East Durham,[7] a constituency which had been held by Liberal Unionists from 1886 to January 1910, when the sitting Liberal Unionist Frederick Lambton was defeated by the Liberal Party candidate Evan Hayward.[7] Burdon had been nominated for the contest by Lord Londonderry, who told the selection meeting of the South East Durham Conservative Association that the candidate should be "well-known, popular, and living in the constituency".[8] Burdon accepted the nomination as a duty in a time of crisis, asserting that "a man who shirked his duty was as much a traitor to his country as the man who betrayed it in a military sense".[8] The Times described him as "a strong local candidate" who "may possibly recover Mr. Lambton's former seat",[9] but the swing of 3.6% was not enough. Burdon halved Hayward's majority, to 1,182 votes (7.8% of the total), down from 15% in January 1910.[7]

He was elected at the 1918 general election as the Member of Parliament (MP) for the Sedgefield division of County Durham.[10] Standing as a Coalition Unionist (a supporter of the coalition government led by David Lloyd George), he won the newly created seat in a three-way contest, with a majority of 826 votes over the second-placed candidate, Labour Party candidate John Herriotts.[11] He did not contest the 1922 general election, when Herriotts won the seat for Labour.[11]

Burdon died at Castle Eden on 1 August 1944, aged 87.[12] In October 1947 his daughter Mrs Sclater-Booth presented the Castle Eden Vase to the British Museum, in his memory.[13] The glass vase was a 6th-century Anglo-Saxon "claw beaker"[14] which had been found by a labourer working on a hedge on the Castle Eden estate in about 1775, in the time of his great-grandfather Rowland Burdon MP.[13]

References[edit]

  1. ^ Leigh Rayment's Historical List of MPs – Constituencies beginning with "S" (part 2)
  2. ^ a b c d e f Hesilridge, Arthur M. (22 March 1867). "Debrett's House of Commons and the Judicial Bench". London: Dean & Son. p. 25. Retrieved 29 January 2011.
  3. ^ a b "No. 28000". The London Gazette. 1 March 1907. p. 1462.
  4. ^ "No. 27248". The London Gazette. 20 November 1900. p. 7142.
  5. ^ "No. 28562". The London Gazette. 15 December 1911. p. 9454.
  6. ^ "No. 26963". The London Gazette. 3 May 1898. pp. 2744–2745.
  7. ^ a b c Craig, F. W. S. (1989) [1974]. British parliamentary election results 1885–1918 (2nd ed.). Chichester: Parliamentary Research Services. p. 274. ISBN 0-900178-27-2.
  8. ^ a b "Election Intelligence". The Times. London. 12 September 1910. p. 8, col F. Retrieved 29 January 2011. (subscription required)
  9. ^ "The General Election. Party Prospect's.-Vii.*, The Four Northern Counties". The Times. London. 29 November 1910. p. 7, col A. Retrieved 29 January 2011.
  10. ^ "No. 31147". The London Gazette. 28 January 1919. p. 1358.
  11. ^ a b Craig, F. W. S. (1983) [1969]. British parliamentary election results 1918–1949 (3rd ed.). Chichester: Parliamentary Research Services. p. 347. ISBN 0-900178-06-X.
  12. ^ "Deaths". The Times. London. 3 August 1944. p. 1, col A. Retrieved 29 January 2011. (subscription required)
  13. ^ a b "Castle Eden Vase: Anglo-Saxon Glass For British Museum". The Times. London. 21 October 1947. p. 3, col C. Retrieved 29 January 2011. (subscription required)
  14. ^ "Claw beaker". British Museum website. London. Retrieved 29 January 2011.

External links[edit]

Parliament of the United Kingdom
New constituency Member of Parliament for Sedgefield
1918 – 1922 		Succeeded by
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