Diana Barham

Diana Barham (1763-1823) was Welsh philanthropist who established schools and churches on the Gower Peninsula and an abolitionist.

Born in 1763, her parents were Margaret (née Gambier) and Charles Middleton, a Naval admiral who was created Baron Barham, of Barham Court and Teston in the County of Kent in May 1805. They were Calvinist Methodists, whose friends included religious writer and philanthropist Hannah More, cleric George Whitefield, and politician and abolitionist William Wilberforce.

She was married 21 December 1780 to Gerard Edwardes, who was a Cambridge-educator banker and member of Parliament. In 1798, he inherited the estates of his uncle, Henry Noel, 6th Earl of Gainsborough, and changed his surname to Noel. They had fifteen or eighteen children, one of whom, Baptist Wriothesley Noel, stated that the his parent's home "combined whig politics, evangelical devotion, aristocratic unconventionality, and strong-mindedness in a potent blend".

Gerard's estates, worth £20,800 a year and consisting of 15,000 acres, were put into trust due to the poor state of financial management by 1816.

When her father died in 1813, as the only child, she became Baroness Barham and her husband became Baron Barham. That year, having found her husband to be a "profligate and eccentric husband", she moved to Fairy Hill, Gower and began funding the construction of free schools as well as four Independent and two Calvinist Methodist churches. She was also an abolitionist and was friends with Samuel Johnson.

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