 During that time, William Ewart Gladstone (who had come into possession of Hawarden Castle in north Wales, through his wife's family, the Glynns) visited his elder brother many times, and practised his hobbies of walking and tree-felling across the moors of the estate.The estate lands had slowly expanded during Thomas's tenure to encompass , bordering Balmoral to the north.Sir Thomas died in 1889, passing the Baronetcy on to his eldest son John, a bachelor soldier, who came home to run the estate with his sister Mary in the 1890s.