Philip Kington

Philip Oliphant Kington (17 December 1832 – 2 July 1892) was an English businessman and landowner who inherited a Scottish clan chiefdom and also played a single first-class cricket game in Australia.[1][2] From 1867, when he inherited Ardblair Castle in Scotland from his maternal Oliphant relatives, he took the triple-barrelled name "Kington-Blair-Oliphant".[2] He was born at Clifton, Bristol and died at Datchet, then in Berkshire, now in Buckinghamshire.

Kington was the son of Thomas Kington of Charlton House, Wraxall in north Somerset; he was educated at Harrow School and in 1851 he matriculated at Trinity College, Cambridge, although there is no record that he completed a degree at Cambridge University.[2] He played cricket at Harrow, and appeared in the Eton v Harrow match in 1851, but there is no evidence that he played at all at Cambridge.[1]

In January 1855, he was named as one of the founding "resident members" of the new Melbourne, Australia branch of Miles and Kington, the family firm and a Bristol-based company of "General Agents and Commission Merchants", alongside William Augustus Mackworth, who had earlier played first-class cricket for Cambridge University and Manchester Cricket Club.[3] Both Mackworth and Kington were elected members of the Melbourne Chamber of Commerce in May 1855.[4] Kington was also elected to the committee of the Melbourne Cricket Club in October 1855.[5]

The big match of the 1855/56 cricket season in Melbourne was a projected first game against a team from Sydney; this was later expanded to a match between the two colonies of Victoria and New South Wales and Kington was one of five Melbourne Cricket Club players selected for the Victoria team.[6] The match, later regarded as first-class, was very low scoring; Kington was one of only three Victoria players to reach double figures in the game, scoring 12 not out in the first innings, but being out for 0 in the second – he also kept wicket in the second New South Wales innings.[7]

Kington remained with the Melbourne Cricket Club the following year but then appears to have returned to England; he is recorded in a minor match in the 1858 season and then in others across the 1860s, but he did not play first-class cricket again.[1] He inherited Ardblair Castle in 1867 and with it responsibilities within a branch of Clan Oliphant; by the time of his death in 1892, however, he was living at Datchet Lodge, Datchet. He left £21,000 in his will and was buried at Wraxall.