John Naylor (1813-1889)

John Naylor was born in Liverpool in 1813, son of John Naylor and Dorothy Bullin. His father died when he was 3 and the family went to live with Dorothy’s brother Richard. The Bullins were prominent merchants and bankers in Liverpool and related to Thomas Leyland, one of the wealthiest men in the region, who made them his heirs. John was educated at Eton, then at Trinity College, Cambridge. When Richard Bullin died in 1844, John became a partner in Leyland Bullins Bank.

In 1846 John married Georgiana Edwards and they were given Leighton Hall near Welshpool as a wedding gift by Richard’s younger brother, Christopher. In 1849, when Christopher too died, John Naylor and his two brothers succeeded to the combined Leyland/Bullin inheritance. Thomas, the eldest, changed his name to Leyland in accordance with the terms of Thomas Leyland’s will. John used his share to rebuild Leighton Hall (the interior design was by Pugin, the garden by Edward Kemp) and to develop a model farm on the estate. Notable features included a funicular railway, construction of a reservoir that not only supplied water to the house and estate but also drove turbines, and a manure irrigation system that piped waste from the piggery to fertilise the fields. Over the years Naylor also built a significant art collection, much of which is now in the Walker Gallery in Liverpool.

John Naylor died in 1889 and Leighton Hall was inherited by his eldest son, Christopher John Naylor, who in 1893 changed his name to Leyland when he inherited from his uncle. It was Christopher John who identified and selectively propagated the popular hedging plant Cuprocyparis leylandii, which arose from the chance cross-pollination of two North American conifers planted by his father on the Leighton estate.