Alfred Ronalds
English author, artisan and Australian pioneer
Alfred Ronalds (10 July 1802 – 23 April 1860) was an English writer, artisan, and Australian pioneer, best known for his book The Fly-fisher's Entomology.
Life and family
Early years
He was born at No. 1 Highbury Terrace, Highbury, the eleventh child of wealthy London wholesale cheesemongers Francis Ronalds and Jane née Field. The inventor Sir Francis Ronalds FRS was his oldest brother and mentor. The family later resided at Kelmscott House in Hammersmith, Queen Square in Bloomsbury, and in Croydon.
After a Unitarian schooling, probably at Rev. John Potticary’s school in Blackheath, Ronalds was apprenticed at age 14 to learn the ways of business. He was unsuited to the commercial world, however, and instead spent his time developing his scientific, practical, and artistic skills with Sir Francis.
Moving around Britain and to Australia
In 1829 he moved to Staffordshire, renting the Lee Grange farm near Lichfield, formerly owned by Francis Perceval Eliot. After his marriage to Margaret Bond of Tixall in 1831, they settled at the property of Lea Fields near Gratwich, where he focused on fly fishing.
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The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 3, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q110133978. VIAF identifies the subject as 117835764. 1 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1802, 1860, 1829 and 1831.
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This entry incorporates text from “Alfred Ronalds” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.