Richard Welford

Richard Welford (1836–1919) was a British journalist, biographer, local historian, businessman and politician associated with Newcastle upon Tyne in the 19th century. He was the author of a number of well-known works of history of the area and of its leading citizens.

Richard Welford was born in Holloway, London in 1836. He worked in Aylesbury as a reporter for the Bucks Advertiser, before moving to Newcastle in 1854 to work for the Newcastle Chronicle. He was appointed its sub-editor in 1858, a position he held for three years before resigning in 1861 to become a freelance writer. In concert with his writing, he took up, by 1871, a position as secretary of a local shipping company, rising to become managing director of the Tyne Steam Shipping Company. He was active in local politics, serving on the South Gosforth Local Board and acting as a magistrate.^[1]

Welford acted as president of the short-lived Northumbrian Small Pipes Society from 1893 to 1900. He inherited J. W. Fenwick's library of documents and manuscript music for the Northumbrian smallpipes upon Fenwick's death in 1907.^[2]

The Tyne Tees Steam Shipping Company named a passenger cargo ship commissioned by them from Palmers' Shipbuilding & Iron Co Ltd and launched 6 November 1907, completed February 1908 as Richard Welford.^[3]

Welford died in 1919. A bust of Welford is displayed in the Literary and Philosophical Society of Newcastle upon Tyne.^[4]

He was the author of:

• A History of the Parish of Gosforth (1879)^[1]
• St Nicholas Church and its monuments (1880)^[1]
• Pictures of Tyneside Sixty Years Ago (1881)^[5] – a reprint from original plates of Pictures of Tyneside Sixty Years Ago by James Wilson Carmichael^[6]
• History of Newcastle and Gateshead - written in celebration of the town's elevation to city status in 1882^[7]
  • Volume I – 14th and 15th centuries (1884)
  • Volume II – 16th century (1885)
  • Volume III – 16th and 17th centuries (1887)
• Men of Mark 'twixt Tyne and Tweed (1895)
  • Volume 1
  • Volume II
  • Volume III
• Early printing in Newcastle-upon-Tyne (1895)
• Records of the Committees for compounding, etc., with delinquent royalists in Durham and Northumberland during the civil war, etc., 1643–1660 (1905)
• Newcastle Typography and Bibliography, from 1639 to 1800 (date unknown)^[5]

• Articles and chapters by Richard Welford, principally in the Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Newcastle upon Tyne, on Archaeology Data Service