Thomas Barnes was a native of Farnsworth, near Bolton. He made his money from cotton and purchased the Quinta Estate on the edge of Weston Rhyn near the Welsh border in north west Shropshire. He rebuilt the Quinta Hall and in 1858 built the Quinta Congregational Chapel. In 1862 the Quinta Congregational Church was formally established. In 1882 he built the Quinta Congregational School for use as a day school and Sunday school. He was Liberal MP for Bolton and, as such, a strong supporter of the Liberation Society, of which he was an executive committee member during the 1850s. (The Liberation Society was a movement for the disestablishment of the state churches of the United Kingdom—the Church of England, the Church of Wales, the Church of Ireland and the Church of Scotland. Ireland was disestablished in 1870 and Wales in 1920.) He owned numerous farms and coal mines in the area. He was for many years the treasurer of the Shropshire Congregational Union. He promoted chapel building and said that if a church could raise half the funds needed to build a chapel he would fund the other half.

Dr James, the minister of the Quinta Church, delivered a paper on Thomas Barnes at the 2011 Congregational Studies Conference. If anyone has any nuggets of information about Thomas Barnes he would be pleased to hear of them.

Jennifer Barnes has written a detailed biography of Thomas Barnes which Quinta Press was published in April 2012.