If walls could talk

Devon, excess £5.95 million

When he moved his ‘Tribe’ of four daughters and eight sons to Ottery St Mary in 1760, to be near his new post as headmaster of the King’s School, John Coleridge could little have known he had begun a dynasty of some five generations of talented descendants, including his great-grandson the 1st Baron. Coleridges were lawyers, artists, judges, bishops and naval, military and NATO commanders; and, of course, John’s youngest son, the Romantic poet.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge recalled his childhood in the beautiful valley of the River Otter, years later, in: ‘My sweet birth-place, and the old church-tower/ Whose bells, the poor man’s only music, rang/From morn to evening, all the hot Fair-day/So sweetly, that they stirred and haunted me.’