page_title: John Bowring
section_title: Legacy
hierarchical_section_title: John Bowring / Legacy
context_page_description: Sir John Bowring, KCB was an English political economist, traveller, writer, literary translator, polyglot, and the fourth Governor of Hong Kong.
context_section_description: Bowring is credited with popularising Samuel Taylor Coleridge's Kubla Khan or a Vision in a Dream which had been disparaged by the critics and discarded soon after first publication.
  In the mid-19th century a district of the Llynfi Valley, Glamorgan, south Wales was known as Bowrington as it was built up when John Bowring was chairman of the local iron company. Bowring's ironworks community later became part of the Maesteg Urban District. The name was revived in the 1980s when a shopping development in Maesteg was called the Bowrington Arcade.
  Bowring Road, Ramsey, Isle of Man, was named for him in appreciation of his support of universal suffrage for the House of Keys and his efforts to liberalise trade with the island.
  As the 4th Governor, several places in Hong Kong came to be named after him:
  Bowring Praya West and Bowring Praya Central were two roads built on reclaimed land during his tenure, but were respectively renamed Des Voeux Road West and Des Voeux Road Central in 1890 after the Praya Reclamation Scheme.
  Bowrington, or Bowring City, is an area Bowring originally built around the estuary of the Wong Nai Chung river, and is the site of the Bowrington Market. He built an extension named the Bowrington Canal, over which the original Bowrington Road (now called Canal Road) and the Bowrington Bridge passed.  A road running parallel to and one block to the west of Canal Road retains the name Bowrington Road and houses the street market which serves the district.
  Bowring Street in the district of Jordan, Hong Kong
  He was also responsible for the establishment of the Botanic Gardens in Hong Kong, the most indelible mark he made on the colony.
  Two species of lizards, Hemidactylus bowringii and Lygosoma bowringii, are named in honour of either John Bowring or his son John Charles Bowring.
  Actress Susannah York is the great-great-granddaughter of Bowring.
caption: Bowrington Canal in the 1920s
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