Bust of John Scandrett Harford by Lawrence Macdonald, 1847

Description

J. S. Harford was the son of a prominent Bristol banker. He bought the Peterwell estate at Lampeter in or shortly after 1815, making the purchase jointly with his younger brothers. He first met Bishop Burgess, the founder of St David's College Lampeter, in 1820 and shortly afterwards Harford offered him the site of Lampeter Castle, 'Castle Field' or 'Cae Castell', which, as Lords of the Manor of Lampeter, he and his brothers now owned. It was in this way that the College came to Lampeter, rather than being sited at Llanddewi Brefi, which had been Burgess' original intention.

This bust was sculpted in Rome in 1847 by Lawrence MacDonald (1799-1878), an eminent sculptor of the period who was among the founders of the British Academy at Rome. The bust used to stand in a niche high up on the wall of the main hall at Falcondale, the family home just outside Lampeter which had been built by J. S. Harford, and it remained there, still the property of the family, when the family sold the estate in the early 1950s and moved away from the area. The bust was given to the University in the late 1970s by the present head of the Harford family, Sir Timothy Harford, third Baronet and J. S. Harford's great-great-nephew.

Source: A. J. Brothers, 'Art at Lampter', in 'A bold imagining: University of Wales Lampeter 1827-2002', eds Keith Robbins and John Morgan-Guy, 2003