Robert Adair, 1st Baron Waveney

Born in Ballymena, County Antrim, Ireland,[2] he was the older of the two sons of Sir Robert Shafto Adair, 1st Baronet, and his first wife Elizabeth Maria Strode.[3] He married Theodosia Meade in 1836; they had no children.[4]

Adair first stood for election to Parliament in April 1843, when he was the runner-up at a by-election for the Eastern division of Suffolk.[5] He was unsuccessful again at a by-election for the borough of Cambridge in July 1845,[6] but at the 1847 general election he was elected as one of Cambridge's two MPs.[6] He was defeated at the 1852 general election, but that result was overturned on petition and he was returned to the House of Commons at the resulting by-election in August 1854. He was unseated again in 1857 general election, and, at the 1859 general election, again unsuccessfully contested East Suffolk.[6] He stood again one more time, in Canterbury at the 1865 general election, but did not win a seat.[7] He was appointed High Sheriff of Antrim in 1853.[8]

A Fellow of the Royal Society,[2] he succeeded to the baronetcy in 1869, on the death of his father.[1] He was ennobled on 10 April 1873, as Baron Waveney, of South Elmham in the County of Suffolk.[9][10] He was Provincial Grand Master of the United Grand Lodge of England Masonic province of Suffolk at the time of his death.[11] He served as Lord Lieutenant of Antrim from 1884 until his death in 1886,[10][12] aged 74, when the peerage became extinct and he was succeeded in the baronetcy by his younger brother Hugh (1815–1902), who had been MP for Ipswich from 1847 to 1874.

The Adair family owned extensive estates in Ballymena, and have been described as the "founding fathers" of the town.[13] The town is built on land given to the Adair family by King Charles 1 in 1626, on the provision that the town holds two annual fairs and a free Saturday market in perpetuity.[14]

In 1865 Adair began the construction in the demesne of Ballymena Castle, a substantial family residence in the Scottish baronial style.[15] The castle was not completed until 1887,[16] and was demolished in 1957 after having lain empty for some years and being vandalised; the site is now a car park. In 1870, Adair donated The People's Park to Ballymena, engaging fifty labourers to work for six months landscaping it.[17]

• Hansard 1803–2005: contributions in Parliament by Sir Robert Adair
• Portraits of Robert Alexander Shafto Adair, Baron Waveney at the National Portrait Gallery, London
• Adair family archives, at the National Archives