John Bryn Edwards

Who was John Bryn Edwards?

Sir John Bryn Edwards, 1st Baronet was a Welsh ironmaster and philanthropist whose seemingly promising future as a figure of political and social leadership in post-World War I Britain was cut short by death at the age of 33.

Edwards was educated at Winchester College and received his MA from Trinity Hall, Cambridge. As the owner of a major metalworking concern known as the Duffryn Steel and Tinplate Works, he had the resources to fund a number of philanthropic and charitable endeavours for which he was recognised in the 1921 King's Birthday Honours by being created, at the unusually young age of 32, a Baronet with Hendrefoilan House and family estate in the Sketty community, near Swansea, serving as the territorial designation.

Edwards married Kathleen Ermyntrude Corfield, daughter of John Corfield, managing director of Dillwyn & Co, on 18 January 1911. They had a son and a daughter. In the years following his death, Hendrefoilan House became part of the campus of Swansea University and was the site, until 2006, of the South Wales Miners' Library.