George Glyn, 1st Baron Wolverton

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George Carr Glyn (27 March 1797 - 24 July 1873) was a banker with interests in the railways, a partner in the family firm of Glyn, Mills and Company, which was reputed to be the largest private bank in London.

He was the fourth son of Sir Richard Carr Glyn, also a banker, and former Lord Mayor of London. His mother was the daughter of John Plumptre of Nottingham. The Wolvertons lived at the manor house in Iwerne Minster, two miles south of Fontmell, in Dorset. They also owned Gaunts House, Wimborne. On 17 March 1823, he married Marianne Grenfell. They had nine sons and two daughters; the eldest son, George Grenfell Glyn, became the second Baron Wolverton, while son Edward Car Glyn became Bishop of Peterborough in 1897.

Glyn and his bank were important in the development of the railways. By the 1850s, over 200 railway companies, both domestic and foreign, banked with Glyn, Mills, and Co. In 1836 Glyn became Chairman of the North Midland Railway, and in 1837 the second Chairman of the London and Birmingham Railway. In 1841 he resigned his Chairmanship of the North Midland, but remained a director. In 1842, he founded the Railway Clearing House, an organization that helped determine payments by companies that operated trains to the many different companies that owned connecting tracks. In 1846, when the London and North Western Railway was formed, he was its Chairman until 1852. Glyn's bank served as one of the London agents for the provincial government of Canada, and in 1852 he was a promoter of the Grand Trunk Railway.

On 14 December 1869 he was made the first Baron Wolverton.

[edit] References

Michael Reed, ‘Glyn, George Carr, first Baron Wolverton (1797–1873)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004.