Daniel Higford Davall Burr


Daniel Higford Davall Burr JP DL was a British Member of Parliament and Justice of the Peace.

Biography

Burr was born to Daniel Burr and Mary Davis. His maternal grandfather was James Davis. His maternal lineage also included Charles Howard, 11th Duke of Norfolk. He was educated at Eton and Christ Church, Oxford.
On 1 February 1836, Burr's mother died and he inherited the estate of Alvington, Gloucestershire.
The following year, he became Conservative Member of Parliament for Hereford, a position he held for four years. He was a member of the Carlton Club.
In 1849, Burr purchased Aldermaston Court, a country estate in Aldermaston, Berkshire, that had been destroyed by fire six years previously. He commissioned Philip Charles Hardwick to build a neoclassical mansion. Burr was an eccentric, and owned monkeys and snakes. His monkey was known to climb the maypole on the village green.
In 1851, Burr became High Sheriff of Berkshire.

Landholdings

In 1883 John Bateman in his digest of the Return of Owners of Land, 1873, The Great Landowners of Great Britain and Ireland, listed Burr's lands as follows:
Burr married Anne-Margaretta Scobell, an amateur watercolour artist, on 18 September 1839 at St Marylebone Parish Church. They had four sons – Higford, Edward, James Scudamore. and Arthur Scudamore.
Burr died on 29 November 1885. The Aldermaston estate was occupied by his son Higford for a short while, before he sold it to Charles Edward Keyser in 1893.
Burr's family's coat of arms included a golden rampant lion, with a crest inscribed with "Ternate" – the Indonesian Maluku Island captured by his father in 1801. The family's motto was versus veras honos – literally "virtue, truth, honour".