Sir Edmund Buckley, 1st Baronet (16 April 1834 – 21 March 1910) was a British landowner and

Conservative Conservatism is a cultural, social, and political philosophy that seeks to promote and to preserve traditional institutions, practices, and values. The central tenets of conservatism may vary in relation to the culture and civilization i ...

politician who sat in the

House of Commons The House of Commons is the name for the elected lower house of the bicameral parliaments of the United Kingdom and Canada. In both of these countries, the Commons holds much more legislative power than the nominally upper house of parliament. ...

from 1865 to 1878. Buckley was born as Edmund Peck, the illegitimate son of Edmund Buckley of Ardwick in Manchester.Diaries of William Rees of Tonn, Llandovery. Cardiff City Library
/ref> He assumed the name of Buckley by Royal Licence in 1864 and inherited considerable estates in Lancashire and Wales including the estate at

Dinas Mawddwy Dinas Mawddwy () is a village in the community of Mawddwy in south-east Gwynedd, north Wales. It lies within the Snowdonia National Park, but just to the east of the main A470, and consequently many visitors pass the village by. Its population is ...

. He became involved in slate quarrying at the Hendre Ddu Slate and Slab Co. for which was built the

Hendre-Ddu Tramway The Hendre-Ddu Tramway was a narrow gauge industrial railway built in 1874 in Mid-Wales to connect the Hendre-Ddu slate quarry to Aberangell station on the Mawddwy Railway. It consisted of a main line long and several branch lines and spurs ...

. He was a Deputy Lieutenant and J.P. for Merionethshire.Debretts House of Commons and the Judicial Bench 1870
/ref> At the 1865 general election Buckley was elected

Member of Parliament A member of parliament (MP) is the representative in parliament of the people who live in their electoral district. In many countries with bicameral parliaments, this term refers only to members of the lower house since upper house members of ...

for

Newcastle-under-Lyme Newcastle-under-Lyme ( RP: , ) is a market town and the administrative centre of the Borough of Newcastle-under-Lyme in Staffordshire, England. The 2011 census population of the town was 75,082, whilst the wider borough had a population of 1 ...

, the same seat his father had previously held. He was created a

baronet A baronet ( or ; abbreviated Bart or Bt) or the female equivalent, a baronetess (, , or ; abbreviation Btss), is the holder of a baronetcy, a hereditary title awarded by the British Crown. The title of baronet is mentioned as early as the 14th ...

on 11 December 1868. At the 1868 general election he was re-elected for Newcastle-under-Lyme and held the seat until 1878, when he resigned from the Commons by taking the

Chiltern Hundreds The Chiltern Hundreds is an ancient administrative area in Buckinghamshire, England, composed of three " hundreds" and lying partially within the Chiltern Hills. "Taking the Chiltern Hundreds" refers to one of the legal fictions used to effect r ...

. In 1872 he built a lavish Victorian gothic mansion at Dinas Mawddwy called "Y Plas". In 1873 he built a hotel, reputedly the oldest reinforced concrete building in Europe, which was called the Buckley Arms hotel. A slump in the slate industry together with the failure of some of his other businesses led to his financial collapse in 1876, and he had to declare bankruptcy. Despite having inherited a vast fortune, he had so over-invested both at Dinas Mawddwy and elsewhere that the entire inheritance was gone; indeed Buckley was £500,000 () in debt, an almost unbelievable amount in the 1870s. Buckley had to sell off most of his estates to pay his debts. One asset he did retain was the

Mawddwy Railway The Mawddwy Railway was a rural line in the Dyfi Valley in mid-Wales that connected Dinas Mawddwy with a junction at railway station on the Newtown and Machynlleth Railway section of the Cambrian Railways. Despite being only 6 miles 63 chains ...

– but with no capital to spend on it. Buckley died at the age of 75. Buckley married Sarah Rees, daughter of William Rees of Tonn near

Llandovery Llandovery (; cy, Llanymddyfri ) is a market town and community in Carmarthenshire, Wales. It lies on the River Tywi and at the junction of the A40 and A483 roads, about north-east of Carmarthen, north of Swansea and west of Brecon. Histo ...

, Wales in 1860. Sarah died in 1883 and Buckley married her cousin Sarah Mysie Burton (née Jenkins), daughter of Evan Jenkins, Rector of Loughor in 1885 His son by his first marriage, also called Edmund Buckley, born in 1861, inherited the Baronetcy on his father's death.

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* {{DEFAULTSORT:Buckley, Edmund 1834 births 1910 deaths Conservative Party (UK) MPs for English constituencies UK MPs 1865–1868 UK MPs 1868–1874 UK MPs 1874–1880 Baronets in the Baronetage of the United Kingdom Deputy Lieutenants of Merionethshire Members of the Parliament of the United Kingdom for Newcastle-under-Lyme British landowners Dinas Mawddwy 19th-century British businesspeople