John Scandrett Harford

• Burke, Bernard, Sir. A genealogical and heraldic history of the landed gentry of Great Britain & Ireland 6th ed. London : Harrison 1879. Vol I. page 740

John Scandrett Harford was a prominent banker in Bristol. By the end of the 18th century the elder John Scandrett Harford was a wealthy landowner, and a staunch Quaker. He married Mary Gray, daughter of Abraham Gray of Tottenham.

The Harford properties included the Blaise Castle Estate at Henbury. This had belonged to Thomas Farr, who went bankrupt in 1778 following outbreak of the American Revolutionary War. The estate then changed hands a number of times before John Harford the Elder purchased the land and buildings. John Harford the Elder had a plain but substantial house built and asked the landscape architect Humphry Repton to lay out the grounds. Repton became a partner of John Nash, whom Harford commissioned to design a group of cottages, Blaise Hamlet, as homes for his retired servants.