William Duke Coleridge, 5th Baron Coleridge, DL (born 18 June 1937), is an

hereditary peer The hereditary peers form part of the peerage in the United Kingdom. As of April 2025, there are 800 hereditary peers: 30 dukes (including six royal dukes), 34 marquesses, 189 earls, 108 viscounts, and 439 barons (not counting subsidiary ...

who lives in

Ottery St Mary Ottery St Mary, known as "Ottery", is a town and civil parishes in England, civil parish in the East Devon district of Devon, England, on the River Otter, Devon, River Otter, about east of Exeter on the B3174. At the 2001 census, the parish, w ...

Devon Devon ( ; historically also known as Devonshire , ) is a ceremonial county in South West England. It is bordered by the Bristol Channel to the north, Somerset and Dorset to the east, the English Channel to the south, and Cornwall to the west ...

, England.

Biography

The son of

Richard Coleridge, 4th Baron Coleridge Richard Duke Coleridge, 4th Baron Coleridge (24 September 1905 – 20 May 1984) was a captain in the Royal Navy and served as the first Executive Secretary of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) from 1952 to 1970.

, Coleridge was educated at

Eton College Eton College ( ) is a Public school (United Kingdom), public school providing boarding school, boarding education for boys aged 13–18, in the small town of Eton, Berkshire, Eton, in Berkshire, in the United Kingdom. It has educated Prime Mini ...

Berkshire Berkshire ( ; abbreviated ), officially the Royal County of Berkshire, is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in South East England. It is bordered by Oxfordshire to the north, Buckinghamshire to the north-east, Greater London ...

, England, and at the

Royal Military Academy Sandhurst The Royal Military Academy Sandhurst (RMAS or RMA Sandhurst), commonly known simply as Sandhurst, is one of several military academy, military academies of the United Kingdom and is the British Army's initial Commissioned officer, officer train ...

. He served as an officer in the

Coldstream Guards The Coldstream Guards is the oldest continuously serving regular regiment in the British Army. As part of the Household Division, one of its principal roles is the protection of the Monarchy of the United Kingdom, monarchy; due to this, it often ...

in Kenya between 1961 and 1963.Charles Mosley, editor, Burke's Peerage, Baronetage & Knightage, 107th edition (2003), vol. 1, p. 851. Coleridge was Commander of the Guards Independent Parachute Company between 1970 and 1972. He was Governor of the Royal West of England School for the Deaf. He retired from the

British Army The British Army is the principal Army, land warfare force of the United Kingdom. the British Army comprises 73,847 regular full-time personnel, 4,127 Brigade of Gurkhas, Gurkhas, 25,742 Army Reserve (United Kingdom), volunteer reserve perso ...

's Coldstream Guards with the rank of

Major Major most commonly refers to: * Major (rank), a military rank * Academic major, an academic discipline to which an undergraduate student formally commits * People named Major, including given names, surnames, nicknames * Major and minor in musi ...

in 1977. He succeeded to the title of 5th Baron Coleridge of Ottery St. Mary in 1984 on the death of his father, the 4th Baron. Coleridge married Everild Tania Hambrough, the daughter of Lieutenant Colonel Beauchamp Hambrough, on 17 February 1962. They have three children, including Coleridge's only son, the Hon. James Duke Coleridge (b. 5 June 1967), the present heir to the barony. A daughter is the

model A model is an informative representation of an object, person, or system. The term originally denoted the plans of a building in late 16th-century English, and derived via French and Italian ultimately from Latin , . Models can be divided in ...

and

actress An actor (masculine/gender-neutral), or actress (feminine), is a person who portrays a character in a production. The actor performs "in the flesh" in the traditional medium of the theatre or in modern media such as film, radio, and television. ...

Tania Harcourt-Cooze. The marriage was dissolved in 1977. Later that year he married nurse and explorer Pamela Baker (b. 24 July 1947; d. 12 August 2018), daughter of George William Baker. He has two children from this second marriage. Lady Coleridge died on 12 August 2018. He married for the third time on 15 September 2020. His third wife is Rosemary, Viscountess Exmouth, 78. It is her third marriage also. The ancestral home is The Chanter's House in

. Coleridge was the last family member to live there because the increasing costs of maintaining the property caused the family

trust Trust often refers to: * Trust (social science), confidence in or dependence on a person or quality It may also refer to: Business and law * Trust (law), a legal relationship in which one person holds property for another's benefit * Trust (bu ...

in October 2006 to put the property up for sale and auction the contents. In 1999 Coleridge had attempted to lease part of the family estate in order to raise money to prevent the sale.''

The Independent ''The Independent'' is a British online newspaper. It was established in 1986 as a national morning printed paper. Nicknamed the ''Indy'', it began as a broadsheet and changed to tabloid format in 2003. The last printed edition was publis ...

'' 26 June 1999.

References

External links

Superstore plan at poet's historic home
{{DEFAULTSORT:Coleridge, William Coleridge, 5th Baron 1937 births Living people People educated at Eton College Coldstream Guards officers Barons in the Peerage of the United Kingdom

William William is a masculine given name of Germanic languages, Germanic origin. It became popular in England after the Norman Conquest, Norman conquest in 1066,All Things William"Meaning & Origin of the Name"/ref> and remained so throughout the Middle ...

Deputy lieutenants of Devon People from Ottery St Mary

Coleridge Samuel Taylor Coleridge ( ; 21 October 177225 July 1834) was an English poet, literary critic, philosopher, and theologian who was a founder of the Romantic Movement in England and a member of the Lake Poets with his friend William Wordsworth ...