Sir John Henry Birchenough, 1st Baronet, GCMG (7 March 1853 – 12 May 1937)
Birchenough joined the family silk business, John Birchenough and Sons, as a partner with his father and two brothers, Walter Edwin Birchenough (the father of the Very Reverend Godwin Birchenough) and William Taylor Birchenough. The latter was married to Jane Peacock, daughter of Richard Peacock MP, the locomotive manufacturer.
The Birchenoughs, who were Methodists, were a prominent business family in Macclesfield, and Henry's father, a Liberal, served as mayor of the town in 1876. In common with other silk manufacturing families in Macclesfield Henry Birchenough was engaged in supporting local charities and served variously as the chairman of the Technical School, the School of Art and the "Useful Knowledge Society" in Macclesfield.
As well as being a partner in the family silk business Birchenough was also a director of the Imperial and Continental Gas Association and of British Exploration of Australia Ltd, and later served as president of the Macclesfield Chamber of Commerce
Henry Birchenough was married to Mabel Charlotte, third daughter of George Granville Bradley, Dean of Westminster. Mabel, like her sister Margaret,[19] was a writer and the author of The Popular Guide to Westminster Abbey (1885), Disturbing Elements (1896), Potsherds (1898), and Private Bobs and the New Recruit (1901). One of Birchenough's nephews, William Taylor Birchenough (son of William Taylor Birchenough of Gawsworth Hall), played in the famous Eton v. Harrow Fowler's match in 1910 and another, the Very Reverend Godwin Birchenough, became Dean of Ripon.
Birchenough had two daughters, but no sons, and so the baronetcy became extinct on his death