Ivor Bertie Guest, 1st Baron Wimborne was a Welsh industrialist.
Background
Sir Ivor Bertie Guest was born at Dowlais, near Merthyr Tydfil, the son of Lady Charlotte Guest, translator of the Mabinogion, and Sir John Josiah Guest, owner of the world"s largest iron foundry, Dowlais Ironworks. His middle name (Bertie) was from his mother"s family, the Earls of Abingdon, descended from a Tudor courtier who married the Dowager Duchess of Suffolk, and herself suo jure Baroness Willoughby de Eresby.
Career
Educated at Harrow School in Middlesex, he went on to gain a Master of Arts degree from Trinity College, Cambridge in 1856. He was commissioned a cornet in the Dorsetshire Yeomanry on 20 April 1858 and was promoted lieutenant on 11 March 1867. He held the office of High Sheriff of Glamorgan in 1862 and was the mayor of Poole from 1896-1897.
In 1879 he rebuilt the real tennis court at Canford.
He was lampooned in Vanity Fair as "the paying Guest". Guest succeeded his father to his baronetcy following his death in 1852.
He was elevated to the peerage in 1880 as Baron Wimborne, of Canford Magna in the County of Dorset, on Disraeli"s initiative. From 1874 on, he stood unsuccessfully for election to the House of Commons as a Conservative, contesting Glamorganshire at the 1874 general election, Poole at a by-election May 1874, and Bristol at a by-election in 1878 and at the 1880 general election.
However, following the tariff reform by Chamberlain he seceded from the Conservative party and sat in the House of Lords as a liberal.
He was President of the Dean Close Memorial School from 1902. In 1867, Guest bought at auction "Hamilton House" located at 22 Arlington Street in the Saint James"s district of the City of Westminster in central London from the widow of William Hamilton, 11th Duke of Hamilton. As the house had traditionally been renamed with the title of each peer who owned it, upon receiving his title in 1880, Guest renamed the house "Wimborne House".
His will was probated in April 1914, provisionally at £250,000.