Colonel Rowland Burdon DL, JP, VD (19 June 1857 – 1 August 1944)[1] was an English landownder and Conservative Party politician from County Durham. He sat in the House of Commons from 1918 to 1922.
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Burdon was the son of the Reverend John Burdon, from Castle Eden in County Durham.[2] He was educated at Repton School, and at University College, Oxford.[2] In 1887 he married Mary Arundell, the daughter of Wyndham Slade of Montys Court in Taunton, Somerset.[2]
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 as a Deputy Lieutenant of County Durham in 1900,[4] and served 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 unsuccesfully 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 Catle 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]
Parliament of the United Kingdom | ||
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New constituency | Member of Parliament for Sedgefield 1918 – 1922 |
Succeeded by John Herriotts |