Christopher Rice Mansel Talbot

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Christopher Rice Mansel Talbot (10 May 1803 – 17 January 1890) was a wealthy south Wales landowner and industrialist who saw the potential of his family's estates as a site for an extensive ironworks, served by railways and a port at what became known as Port Talbot. He was a Liberal Member of Parliament for Glamorganshire and later for Mid Glamorganshire. First elected in 1830, he retained his seat until his death.

Talbot was born into the wealthy family of Thomas Mansel Talbot on 10 May 1803 at Penrice on the Gower Peninsula, near Swansea. He was educated in Dorset, at Harrow School and at Oriel College, Oxford, from where he graduated in 1824. In the meantime, after his father's death in 1813, he had inherited the family estates at Penrice and Margam, which were held in trust until he came of age in 1824.

[edit] Margam Castle

After a Grand Tour of Europe, Talbot returned to south Wales and over a ten-year period from 1830 set about redeveloping the family estate at Margam Castle. The mansion was designed in the Tudor Gothic style by architect Thomas Hopper (1776–1856), while Edward Haycock (1790–1870) was supervisory architect and designed parts of the interior and exterior of the house, the stables, terraces and lodges. Talbot also took a keen interest in the project, encouraging his architects to borrow elements from Lacock Abbey in Wiltshire (ancestral home of the Talbots and home to his cousin William Henry Fox Talbot) and Melbury House in Dorset (home of his mother's family, the Fox-Strangways, Earls of Ilchester). Today Margam Castle is a Grade I listed building.

[edit] Industry and transportation

Talbot also recognised that improved transportation could stimulate industrial growth, and as Member of Parliament he introducing a Bill in 1834 to improve the old harbour at Aberavon; two years later, a further Bill provided for the harbour's expansion and a change of name to Port Talbot in his honour. He also encouraged the development of Swansea docks, and pioneered the introduction of railways to south Wales, being chairman and a shareholder in the South Wales Railway Company, which was acquired by the Great Western Railway in 1863, with Talbot joining the board of the GWR.

Talbot also invested in the area's extractive and metal production industries. The Port Talbot ironworks opened in early 1831, part of the industrialisation then taking place across south Wales; copper had been smelted at nearby Neath since 1584, and there were tinworks and ironworks at Pontardawe.

[edit] Legacy

His only son Theodore died in 1876 following a hunting accident. It was therefore his daughter Emily Charlotte Talbot (1840–1918) who inherited her father's fortune and became just as notable in the development of ports and railways.

Peerage of the United Kingdom
Preceded by Sir Christopher Cole	Member of Parliament for Glamorganshire with Lewis Weston Dillwyn 1832–1837 Viscount Adare 1837–1851 Sir George Tyler 1851–1857 Sir Henry Vivian, Bt 1857–1885 1830–1885	Succeeded by (constituency abolished)
Preceded by (new constituency)	Member of Parliament for Mid Glamorganshire 1885–1890	Succeeded by Sir Samuel Thomas Evans
Honorary Titles
Preceded by The Marquess of Bute	Lord Lieutenant of Glamorgan 1848–1890	Succeeded by The Lord Windsor