Diana Noel, 2nd Baroness Barham

Diana Noel, 2nd Baroness Barham (18 September 1762 – 12 April 1823) was a British evangelist.

Born Diana Middleton at Barham Court, Teston, Kent, she was the only child of Sir Charles Middleton, who was created Baron Barham in 1805, and his wife, Margaret (died 1792). For many years, Diana's family resided with her mother's childhood friend, Lady Elizabeth Bouverie, either at the Middletons' London home at 36 Hertford Street, Hanover Square, or at Bouverie's estate, Barham. On Lady Elizabeth's death, Barham passed to Sir Charles. It was at Teston during the 1780s, and through the influence of James Ramsay, that the Middletons assumed a position of leadership in the abolitionist movement, recruiting and encouraging the campaign's leading adherents, including Thomas Clarkson and William Wilberforce. Outside Clapham, Barham served as the pre-eminent centre of the crusade against the slave trade.

On 21 December 1780, she married, at St George's, Hanover Square, Gerard Noel Edwardes (Gerard Noel Noel after 1798), a wealthy and eccentric landowner, with whom she had eighteen children, including Gerard Thomas Noel and Baptist Wriothesley Noel.

Throughout much of her life, Diana maintained a wide and influential circle of evangelical friends and relations. Despite her husband's considerable wealth and family connections in the midlands, her life continued to revolve around Teston, where her children were exposed to many of the leading politicians and religious figures of the day. They were also exposed, through Gerard's interest in cricket, to the Prince of Wales' circle at the Royal Pavillion in Brighton.

In 1813, upon the death of her father, Diana inherited Barham and succeeded as Baroness Barham under a special remainder. She then separated from her eccentric husband, setting up house at Fairy Hill on the Gower peninsula, where she established "Lady Barham's Connexion", a body of six chapels (and a number of free schools) connected with the Welsh Calvinistic Methodists. On Sundays, after being carried across the fields by two servants in a sedan, she occupied a separate room behind the pulpit at Bethesda Chapel; warmed by an open fire, it contained an elevated box pew, which was entered by a flight of steps and reserved exclusively for the Fairy Hill household. When she grew tired of the sermon, the door of the room was closed and she went home. Initially, Lady Barham engaged ministers from England to fill her pulpits; over time, however, she began to employ Welsh ministers, the most prominent being William Griffiths (died 1849), the so-called "Apostle of Gower".

Lady Barham, who had been in poor health for some years, died at Fairy Hill on 12 April 1823, and was buried at Teston. Her elaborate cortège from Wales to Teston produced considerable public interest. The Connexion then passed briefly to the care of her eldest son, Charles, but was eventually conveyed to the Welsh Calvinistic Methodists.

ource

*Grayson Carter, "Noel , Diana, suo jure Baroness Barham (1762–1823)", Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/47112, accessed 7 July 2008]