Robert Alexander Shafto Adair, 1st Baron Waveney (25 August 1811 – 15 February 1886) was a British

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politician who served as a Member of Parliament (MP) for

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for 8 of the years from 1847 to 1857.

Life

Born in

Ballymena Ballymena ( ; from , meaning 'the middle townland') is a town in County Antrim, Northern Ireland. It had a population of 31,205 people at the 2021 United Kingdom census, making it the List of localities in Northern Ireland by population, seven ...

County Antrim County Antrim (named after the town of Antrim, County Antrim, Antrim, ) is one of the six counties of Northern Ireland, located within the historic Provinces of Ireland, province of Ulster. Adjoined to the north-east shore of Lough Neagh, the c ...

, Ireland, he was the older of the two sons of Sir Robert Shafto Adair, 1st Baronet, and his first wife Elizabeth Maria Strode. He married Theodosia Meade in 1836; they had no children. Adair first stood for election to

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in April 1843, when he was the runner-up at a

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for the Eastern division of Suffolk. He was unsuccessful again at a by-election for the borough of

in July 1845,Craig, op. cit., pages 76–77 but at the 1847 general election he was elected as one of Cambridge's two MPs. He was defeated at the 1852 general election, but that result was overturned on petition and he was returned to the

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at the resulting by-election in August 1854. He was unseated again in 1857 general election, and, at the 1859 general election, again unsuccessfully contested East Suffolk. He stood again one more time, in

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at the 1865 general election, but did not win a seat.Craig, op. cit., page 79 He was appointed High Sheriff of Antrim in 1853. When the old East Suffolk Militia was reconstituted as the Suffolk Artillery Militia in 1853, Adair was appointed to command it as Lieutenant-Colonel. He remained in command for many years, and was appointed its first Honorary Colonel on 19 November 1881. A

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, he succeeded to the baronetcy in 1869, on the death of his father. He was ennobled on 10 April 1873, as Baron Waveney, of South Elmham in the County of Suffolk. He was Provincial Grand Master of the

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Masonic province of Suffolk at the time of his death. He served as Lord Lieutenant of Antrim from 1884 until his death in 1886, aged 74, when the peerage became extinct and he was succeeded in the baronetcy by his younger brother Hugh (1815–1902), who had been MP for

Ipswich Ipswich () is a port town and Borough status in the United Kingdom, borough in Suffolk, England. It is the county town, and largest in Suffolk, followed by Lowestoft and Bury St Edmunds, and the third-largest population centre in East Anglia, ...

from 1847 to 1874.

Ballymena

The Adair family owned extensive estates in

, and have been described as the "founding fathers" of the town. The town is built on land given to the Adair family by King Charles 1 in 1626, on the provision that the town holds two annual fairs and a free Saturday market in perpetuity. In 1865 Adair began the construction in the demesne of Ballymena Castle, a substantial family residence in the Scottish baronial style. The castle was not completed until 1887, and was demolished in 1957 after having lain empty for some years and being vandalised; the site is now a car park, where said Saturday market is held. In 1870, Adair donated The People's Park to Ballymena, engaging fifty labourers to work for six months landscaping it.

References

External links

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Adair family archives
at the National Archives {{DEFAULTSORT:Adair, Robert Waveney Waveney Waveney Liberal Party (UK) MPs for English constituencies UK MPs 1847–1852 UK MPs 1852–1857 Suffolk Militia officers Waveney Waveney Waveney Waveney Waveney Freemasons of the United Grand Lodge of England Peers of the United Kingdom created by Queen Victoria