Researching William Christie

He was born in Woolwich, London, the son of Samuel Hunter Christie and educated at King's College School and Trinity College, Cambridge. He was fourth wrangler in 1868 and was elected a fellow of Trinity in 1869.

Having been Chief Assistant at the Royal Observatory at Greenwich from 1870 to 1881, he was appointed to replace George Airy as the eighth Astronomer Royal in 1881 and remained in office until 1910. He received the degree D.Sc. (honoris causa) from the University of Oxford in June 1902, and was created a Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath (KCB) in 1904. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in June, 1881. He was president of the Royal Astronomical Society from 1888 to 1890.

The first Astronomer Royal to retire at 65 (all previous incumbents bar Airy and John Pond had died in office; John Pond had been forced by poor health to resign in 1835, while Airy retired aged 81), Christie died and was buried at sea near Gibraltar in 1922. He had married in 1881 Mary Violette, daughter of Sir Alfred Hickman.

The owner of a wallpaper company in Belfast, Christie was Lord Mayor of Belfast between 1972 and 1975. During this time his home and business were attacked several times, and his wife survived a gunshot to the head in 1972. His time in office coincided with the suspension of the Parliament of Northern Ireland, and he was therefore the first Lord Mayor since John White in 1920 not to serve as an ex officio member of the Senate.

In the 1973 elections to Belfast City Council Christie stood in the north-west Belfast 'E' division (equivalent to the current wards of Legoniel, Ballysillan, Ardoyne, Woodvale, Forthriver and Ballygomartin), which elected 6 councillors. He was the only UUP candidate to stand in E and gained 7,875 votes, which equated to 2.8 times the electoral quota. He retired in 1977, and the UUP vote dropped more than 3000 votes. Amongst two UUP councillors elected to replace him was future Lord Mayor Billy Bell.

He was the son of Langham Christie, who had inherited Glyndebourne, the Sussex country house now famous for its music festival, after paying off a rival family claimant. William succeeded his father in 1861.

William was the grandson of Daniel Beat Christin, a Swiss of obscure origins who anglicised his surname to Christie on entering the service of the East India Company and who retired to England in the 1780s having made a sudden fortune and an advantageous marriage to the daughter of Sir Purbeck Langham which brought Glyndebourne into the Christin/Christie family.

During the 1870s William made substantial alterations to Glyndebourne, adding a brick extension, ornate stonework and balustrading. In 1876 he engaged architect Ewan Christian to install bay windows and add decorative brickwork to give the house its current Jacobean appearance.

He was elected as the Member of Parliament (MP) for Lewes at the 1874 general election, having unsuccessfully contested the seat in 1865 and 1868. He was the first Conservative MP to represent Lewes in the House of Commons since Henry Fitzroy had died in 1860. Christie was re-elected in 1880, and retired from Parliament at the 1885 general election.

He was born in Ceylon to Thomas Christie, who was the medical inspector-general, and Mary Tolfrey. He was educated in England and entered the military, becoming a lieutenant in 1827 and a captain in 1833. In 1845 he married Ellen Harrison, with whom he had five children. That year he migrated to New South Wales, where he was promoted major in 1838. He left the military in 1839 and in 1840 was appointed assistant police magistrate at Hyde Park Barracks. He was serjeant-at-arms for the New South Wales Legislative Council from 1848 to 1852, when he joined the Council as a non-elected member and served as Postmaster-General. Christie left the Council in 1856, and died at Pyrmont in 1873.