Christopher Rice Mansel Talbot

Christopher Rice Mansel Talbot FRS (10 May 1803 – 17 January 1890) was a landowner, industrialist and Liberal politician. He developed his estate at Margam near Swansea as an extensive ironworks, served by railways and a port, which was renamed Port Talbot. He served as a Member of Parliament for Glamorgan constituencies from 1830 until his death in 1890, a sixty-year tenure which made him the longest serving MP in the nineteenth century. He was Lord Lieutenant of Glamorgan, from 1848 to 1890.

Talbot was descended from the Earls of Shrewsbury, through Hensol Castle, Talbot's Castle and Lacock Abbey. The family had bought Margam Abbey and its extensive 18,725 acres (7,578 ha) parish of Margam during the Dissolution of the Monasteries. Having then married with the Mansels of Oxwich and Penrice, the Talbot's had become Glamorgan’s largest resident landowners, with estates totalling 34,000 acres (14,000 ha) in that county alone. Their home estate at Margam included ancient metal workings, and extensive mineral rights across Margam, Kenfig and Aberavon. Talbot's father acquired the estate at Penrice, where having rebuilt Penrice Castle by 1820 the annual rent revenues reached £15,000.

Christopher Rice Mansel Talbot was born at Penrice, Swansea, the son of Thomas Mansel Talbot, and Lady Mary Lucy, the daughter of Henry Fox-Strangways, 2nd Earl of Ilchester. When his father died in 1813, Christopher was only ten years old, so his estates at Penrice and Margam were held in trust until he came of age in 1824. He was educated at a private school in Dorset, and then at Harrow School and Oriel College, Oxford, from where he graduated in 1824 with a 1st class honours degree in mathematics. He then undertook a Grand Tour of Europe. His favourite activities were yachting, racing and hunting. In 1823 he was elected a member of the Royal Yacht Club (later the Royal Yacht Squadron), and he was its Vice Commodore from 1851 to 1861.

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