Lieut-Col E C Pine-Coffin of ‘Cleave Barton’, Durrant Lane, Northam, who, on Monday, became president of the Royal North Devon Golf Club, is a member of one of the oldest families in the country.

Until Portledge House became a hotel in 1947 it had been their seat since 1200. Col Pine-Coffin, in addition to owning the Portledge estate, is lord of the manor of Alwington, Goldworthy and Monkleigh. Like many of his forebears – a Coffin, of Portledge, was with Henry VIII on the Field of the Cloth of Gold – he was a professional soldier. From 1915 until the end of World War 2 he served with the Indian Army. Captured by the Japanese at the fall of Singapore, in common with so many others he spent the remainder of the war building the infamous Burma railway, which claimed the lives of a large number of prisoners. In the First World War he served in Mesopotamia, and, following the Armistice, took part in three campaigns on the Indian North-West frontier. He joined the Royal North Devon Golf Club nearly 50 years ago.
There have been two suggestions about the derivation of the name ‘Coffin’. One is that is from the Norman French cophin – a basket. But a noted local historian, the late Mr W H Rogers, of Orleigh Court, contended it was much more likely to be from the Cornish word meaning ‘ruddy’. This suggested that Coffin was an indigenous Celt who, when the Normans came, was allowed to retain his small pre-Conquest estate at Alwington, with his own manor court, but with a Norman lord over him to whom he had to do suit and service. The marriage of Edward Pyne, of Eastdown, with Dorothy Coffin in 1672, wrote Mr Rogers ‘cemented a very ancient connection between the Coffins and their overlords, resulting in the fusion of the two families under the name of Pine-Coffin’ I am reminded that in America 86 years ago there was a notable gathering of the ‘Clan Coffin’ as they were proud to call themselves, to mark the 200th anniversary of the death of Tristram Coffin, the first of the family to settle in America. He had emigrated in 1624. The Clan, who regarded Portledge as their ancestral home, certainly ‘went to town’ with the celebration in Nantuckett, Mass. About 500 attended, many travelling by special trains, and thousands of words were spoken. But some had to wait until late afternoon for their celebration meal.

Gazette article dated 5 January 1968