William_Crawshay_II

William Crawshay II

William Crawshay II

British ironmaster (1788–1867)

William Crawshay II (27 March 1788 – 4 August 1867) was the son of William Crawshay I, the owner of Cyfarthfa Ironworks in Merthyr Tydfil, Wales.[1]

Portrait of William Crawshay II

William Crawshay II became an ironmaster when he took over the business from his father. He was known as the 'Iron King'. He was considered a hard master by some, and his employees took part in the protests that led to the Merthyr Rising of 1831.

He was responsible for the building of Cyfarthfa Castle (now a museum) in the 1820s. In 1847, he retired to Caversham Park in Oxfordshire (now Berkshire), where he died 20 years later. After a fire in 1850, Caversham Park was rebuilt by Crawshay to a design by Horace Jones[2] who much later also designed London's Tower Bridge.

His son, Robert Thompson Crawshay, carried on the South Wales business.

References

  1. [1]
    Price, Watkin William (1959). "Crawshay family". Dictionary of Welsh Biography. National Library of Wales. Retrieved 30 December 2019.
  2. [2]
    G. C. Boase, Jones, Sir Horace (1819–1887) rev. Valerie Scott, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, 2004 (Subscription required)
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