Arthur Howard Heath TD (29 May 1856 – 24 April 1930)[1] was a British industrialist, first-class cricketer, Rugby union international and Conservative Party politician.
He was well known as a rugby player in the 1870s, representing Oxford University RFC against Cambridge in 1875, 1877, 1879, and 1880, and appearing for England against Scotland in 1876.
[2] In 1877 he played for Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC) against Surrey at Lord's and in 1878 for Middlesex, appearing against Yorkshire at Bramall Lane and against Nottinghamshire at Trent Bridge.
The brothers had also founded the Birchenwood Colliery Company at Newchapel near Kidsgrove in 1893, developing a coking and coal byproducts business.
[18] According to his obituary in The Times Birchenwood did well during the First World War when its chemical products were in demand for explosives, but in the depression that followed, the company began to struggle, but the brothers kept it going to provide employment to the people of Kidsgrove, though it returned no profit to them.
[5] In legal notices relating to his estate he was described as "Arthur Howard Heath, late of Keele Hall, in the county of Stafford, and of No.
[21] On 10 January 1884 at Thornton, Buckinghamshire, he married Alice (1854-1942), eldest daughter of the Reverend Herbert Richard Peel (1831-1885), a nephew of the prime minister Sir Robert Peel, 2nd Baronet, and his wife Georgiana Maria (1830-1907), daughter of the Reverend Thomas Baker.
[22] Alice's sister Amy married the Reverend James Henry Savory, a cricketer for Oxford and MCC and an FA Cup finalist in football.