Urban H. Broughton

Urban Hanlon Broughton (12 April 1857 – 30 January 1929) was an English civil engineer who went to work in the United States, married an American heiress, returned to England and was for three-and-a-half years a Conservative Member of Parliament. In 1928, he donated Ashridge House to the Conservative Party and in 1929, he was in line for elevation to the peerage, but he died before the honour was bestowed. His wife, Cara Leland (née Rogers) Broughton, was granted the style of a baron's wife, and their eldest son was created the first Baron Fairhaven.

Early life Broughton was born in Worcester, England on 12 April 1857, the son of railway manager John Broughton and Abigail Elizabeth (née O'Hanlon) Broughton. The family moved around as John Broughton worked for different railway companies, living in Lapworth, Warwickshire and, later, Ireland.

In the 1860s, John and Elizabeth Broughton spent six years in India, leaving their children with relatives of Elizabeth in Ireland. Tragedy struck the family when three of the children died within one week. The surviving children were reunited with their parents in 1868 and the family settled in Wrexham in North Wales, where Broughton attended Grove Park School. John Broughton spent the last ten years or more of his life in the Joint Counties Lunatic Asylum in Carmarthen, Wales.

Broughton was a pupil of the firm Low and Thomas, civil and mining engineers of Wrexham, from 1875 to 1878. He also studied at the University of London and won the Miller Prize of the Institution of Civil Engineers.

Career and marriage Broughton's early career included work on the construction of Felixstowe docks, 1882–1884. He then went to the United States to promote the hydro-pneumatic sewerage system of Isaac Shone, a former neighbour from Wrexham. He worked on sewerage systems in Chicago and other towns and, on his own account, was a contractor for 1893 World Fair in Chicago.

In 1895, Broughton was invited by oil tycoon Henry Huttleston Rogers of Standard Oil to install the Shone sewerage system in his home town of Fairhaven, Massachusetts where the family had a summer home.

When Broughton's father-in-law died in 1909, his wealth was divided between his four surviving children equally, and Cara and Urban Broughton became enormously wealthy. The gift was said to be worth three or four hundred thousand pounds.

Broughton died of pneumonia at his home in Park Street on 30 January 1929. On 2 May 1929 the king proclaimed that "Cara Leland Broughton, widow of Urban Hanlon Broughton, may henceforth enjoy the same style and title as if her husband...had survived and received the title and dignity of Baron Fairhaven".

Legacy

On 11 December 1929 a memorial tablet to Broughton in the chapel of Ashridge house was unveiled by Stanley Baldwin. In 1929 Lady Fairhaven and her sons bought the historic Runnymede Meadow, with adjoining lands totaling , southwest of London, and presented it to the National Trust "to preserve for ever the site where Magna Carta was signed and to honour the memory of the late Mr Urban Hanlon Broughton, husband of Lady Fairhaven and father of Lord Fairhaven and Captain Broughton".

Lady Fairhaven and her sons commissioned Sir Edwin Lutyens to design a set of twin memorials consisting of two lodges and pillars at the Windsor end of the meadow and two kiosks and pillars at the Egham end. The pillars were unveiled by The Prince of Wales on 8 July 1932 in a ceremony attended by Lady Fairhaven, her son Lord Fairhaven, Sir Edwin Lutyens, Windsor MP Annesley Somerville, and others.