Sir Samuel Morton Peto, 1st Baronet (4 August 1809 – 13 November 1889) was an English entrepreneur, civil engineer and railway developer, and, for more than 20 years, a Member of Parliament (MP).

A partner in the firm of Grissell and Peto, he managed construction firms that built many of London's major buildings and monuments, including the Reform Club, The Lyceum Theatre, Nelson's Column and the replacement Houses of Parliament - commissions which brought him great wealth.

Along with a small group of other Master Builders in London he is credited as a founding member of the Chartered Institute of Building in 1834.

In addition, they built Nelson's Column the new Houses of Parliament (1843) and the vast infrastructure project of the London brick sewer.

Next, the firm built its first line of track, the Hanwell and Langley section of the Great Western Railway, which included the Wharncliffe Viaduct.

[7] In February 1855 the British government recognised Peto for his wartime services; he was made Baronet of Somerleyton Hall in the County of Suffolk.

He helped to make a guarantee towards the financing of The Great Exhibition of 1851, backing Joseph Paxton's Crystal Palace.

Between 1863-65 the current Embassy of Nepal in Kensington Place Gardens, London W8, designed by the architect James Murray, was built for Peto.

The CMR itself survived and began to recover after it had introduced passenger services in 1876 and was then leased by the Great Western Railway in 1877, but this improvement came too late for Peto.

[15][note 1] An extremely unfavourable portrait of Peto is included in the appendix to George Borrow's Romany Rye, where he is described as "Mr. Flamson".

Kent, Samuel Peto Way is a residential road built upon the old Newtown Railway Works site and was named in his honour.

[18] In Bishop's Stortford, Hertfordshire, Morton Peto Road is located close to the town's railway station.