[NI0264]
The 1881 census for Devonshire lists;
"Derwent Coleridge, age 80 Head, birth place Keswick
Mary S. Coleridge, wife, age 73, birth place Plymouth
Christabel R. Coleridge, daughter, age 37, birth place Chelsea
Edith Coleridge, niece, age 48, birth place Hampstead"
as living at the same location of Tormoham during the 1881 census.
The Unknown Coleridge, The Life and Times of Derwent Coleridge 1800 - 1883
Raymonde Hainton & Godfrey Hainton
Derwent was born in 1800 into the full flood of Lakeland Romanticism. A profound love of nature, and reverence for his father's poetic circle, never left him. He is the only Coleridge who tried throughout a long and significant public life to put into practice his father's philosophy.
Research among a wealth of previously unpublished material reveals an immensely likeable man with an unquenchable zest for life.
After his unconventional upbringing in the Lake District, and an ardent and moody student life in the Cambridge of the 1820's, Derwent obtained his first job teaching in Plymouth. his passionate courtship of Mary Pridham led to newfound religious convictions and a remarkable marriage partnership. Under her influence he entered the Anglican clergy and became curate and schoolmaster in the Cornish township of Helston. For a decade the Helston Grammar School defied geographical isolation, attracting some distinguished pupils (including Charles Kingsley) and building its master's skills and reputation. The school was ruined by Cornwall's lack of railways and in 1841 Derwent moved to Chelsea to become Principal of St. Marks College, the first national Anglican teacher training college.
Derwent soon found himself embarked upon his greatest life's work. He became committed to putting into practice his father's rational and religious faith in the educability of all people, and the social powers of education. His "teachers of the people" were to be "educated men" in the highest and best sense. Government policy in 1862 put a cruel brake on such aspirations, but not before Derwent had written and practised his philosophy into educational history. The debates he began are resounding today in the controversy over the higher education or the "training" of teachers.
Derwent continued his work until he was 80 in the Middlesex parish of Hanwell, where his house was enlivened by a succession of American pupils, who remembered him with deep respect and affection.
Like Derwent Coleridge himself, the authors of this book studied at Cambridge and have since lived and worked in the Lake District, London, Devon and Cornwall. Godfrey Hainton dedicated his career to educating the "teachers of the people" as Head of the History Department at the College of St. Mark and St. John in Chelsea and Plymouth. He undertook major research for this book in Britain and America before his sudden death.
Raymonde Hainton wrote the book, on the strength of her earlier career as a history teacher, and her current enthusiasms for local history and for the literary works and natural settings which inspired Derwent Coleridge. As a Quaker she is active as a campaigner for peace and environmental causes and a world traveller.
ISBN 1-85756-288-7
£9.95 (illustrated)