One of Devon’s oldest country families – the Pine-Coffins – provides the new High Sheriff of Devon.

Lieut-Col John Pine-Coffin who lives with his wife, son and two daughters at West Drydon, Fairy Cross, will be the third member of his family to hold this centuries old office.
The first of these was in the reign of King Henry VIII, and the second in the reign of King James II.
The Queen followed tradition at a Privy Council at Buckingham Palace when she used a gold handled bodkin to prick the names of the Sheriffs for the ensuing year for all the counties of England and Wales except Cornwall and Lancashire.
Lieut-Col John Pine-Coffin whose family has a link with Alwington parish going back 800 years, is 51 and when he entered the Army just over 30 years ago he followed a family tradition of military service.
He was originally commissioned in the Devons and during the war he saw service in both the Middle and Far East. For 18 years he served with a parachute regiment and in 1963, when stationed at Nassau during the Cuban crisis, he was given world-wide publicity for his exploit in rounding up, single handed, an armed anti-Castro Cuban group on the Bahamas’ Andros Island. For this he was appointed OBE.
Lieut-Col Pine-Coffin’s Army service ended five years ago and now, in addition to managing the family Portledge estate, he runs a mixed farm of about 300 acres.
He is a strong supporter of the campaign to maintain the environment of North Devon and prevent any erosion of its natural beauty. He is chairman of the Bucks Mills Society and people’s warden of Alwington parish church, of which his father, Lieut-Col E C Pine-Coffin, of Northam, is patron.
His outside interests include sailing, tennis, squash and golf.

Gazette article 6 April 1973