Hornby, Charles Harry St John (1867 -1946)

Charles Harry St John Hornby, of Chantmarle, Cattistock in Dorset, Porch House, Potterne in Wiltshire, and Chelsea, was the eldest son of the Reverend Charles Edward Hornby, Vicar of Ebrington in Gloucestershire, and Harriet Catherine Turton. Educated at Harrow and New College, Oxford, where he took his B.A. in 1891, he was called to the Bar in 1892, but gave up the law in the same year and entered the firm of W. H. Smith & Sons, which he helped to reorganize. Among other things he was responsible for setting up their printing and bookbinding operations. At the same time he set up a private press, the Ashendene Press, in the William Morris tradition, for which he had the Subiaco type cut. He married, 19 January 1898, Cicely Rachel Emily, eldest daughter of Charles Barclay, of Bayford in Hertfordshire. His library of early printed books and manuscripts was sold by Sotheby's 24 January 1950.