John Scandrett Harford

Who was John Scandrett Harford?

John Scandrett Harford, FRS was a British banker, benefactor and abolitionist.

He was born the son of John Scandrett Harford, a prominent banker in the English city of Bristol and educated at Christ College, Cambridge. By the end of the 18th Century he was a wealthy banker in his own right and known as being a landowner, a staunch Quaker and an abolitionist.

Harford had a sizeable portfolio, including the Blaise Castle estate at Henbury. This was originally property of Thomas Farr, but Farr went bankrupt in 1778 following the American Revolutionary War. The estate then changed hands a number of times until Harford eventually purchased the land and buildings.

In 1819, he also acquired the Peterwell estate at Lampeter, making the purchase jointly with his younger brothers. It was previously owned by his father-in-law, Richard Hart Davis, who had built c.1812 the a house within its bounds. The estate descended to his nephew John Battersby Harford, who remodelled the house in the Italianate style in 1859 as Falcondale.