Sir William Goulding, 1st Baronet
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Sir William Joshua Goulding, 1st Baronet (7 March 1856 – 12 July 1925) was an Anglo-Irish business magnate, Irish unionist politician and rugby player.[1] He was a member of the short-lived Senate of Southern Ireland.
Goulding was born in Cork, the son of William Goulding, Conservative Member of Parliament for Cork City, and his second wife Maria Heath Manders. He was educated in Cork before attending St John's College, Cambridge, graduating with a masters in 1883. In 1875 Goulding's father employed John Pentland Mahaffy to take his son on a Grand Tour to Italy and Greece, for part of which they travelled with Oscar Wilde. His younger brother, Edward Goulding, was raised to the peerage as Baron Wargrave in 1922.[2]
In 1881 he married Ada Stokes, daughter of Charles Lingard Stokes of Pauntley, Worcester. He had property in Dublin and County Kildare.
Business career
After graduating Goulding returned to Ireland and joined the family fertilizer and phosphates firm, W. & H. M. Goulding. He became chairman of the company on his father's death in 1884 and moved the company headquarters from Cork to Dublin in 1885. He made several acquisitions of other Irish fertilizer businesses, and by 1902 the company's annual production was 119,337 tons.[3]
In 1907, Goulding became chairman of the Great Southern and Western Railway. He was chairman of the Irish railway committee from 1806 to 1909. After the Irish Free State government's amalgamation of southern Irish railway companies, Goulding was appointed chairman of the newly organised board. He was a director of the Irish National Bank Ltd.[4] Goulding was on the council of the Dublin Chamber of Commerce.
