COLMAN, Sir Michael Jeremiah 3rd Bt 1928-2023
Richard R
He was s of Sir
Jeremiah COLMAN 2nd Bt 1886-1961 and Edith Gwendolen 1902-80 d of Sir
Alfred Ernest TRITTON 2nd Bt 1873-1939 and Agneta Elspeth CAMPBELL 1877-1960 scion of that Scots gentry family of Colgrain (and
3xgt gd of 1st Earl of HARDWICKE 1690-1764 etc). He m 1955 Judith
Jean b 1936 d of Vice Adm Sir Peveril Barton Reibey Wallop WILLIAM-POWLETT
KCB KCMG CBE DSO 1898-1985 (4xgt gs of 1st Earl of PORTSMOUTH
1690-1762) and his 1st w Helen Constance Forbes CROMBIE 1903-65, and
had 2 sons and three daus. His elder son succeeds him:
[Sir] JEREMIAH MICHAEL POWLETT Colman [4th Bt] has yet to establish his claim, b 23 Jan 1958. He m 1981 Rev Susan Elizabeth b July 1959 d of John Henry BRITLAND d 2019 of York [by his 1947 m reg Q2 Lancs to Eileen M HOEY], and has three sons and a dau.
SONS LIVING
JOSEPH JEREMIAH b 31 Oct 1988
Nathaniel James b 19 July 1990, m 2014 Hannah V PICARD BROWN d of Ian Brown and Diana Picard Brown of London, and has a dau (Matilda Maya G. b 2021 reg Q2 Wandsworth)
Jacob Robert John b 4 June 1996
DAUGHTER LIVING
Eleanor Mary b 1985
bx...@yahoo.com
colinp
Sir Michael Colman, fifth-generation mustard heir who reinvented himself as a peppermint magnate – obituary
Having grown up in near-Edwardian splendour, he realised his family had become ‘a bit of an anachronism’ and decided to diversify
Sir Michael Colman, 3rd Bt, who has died aged 95, was the last of five generations of the Colman family to run the mustard business; in retirement he made a mint by reviving the British peppermint crop and creating the Summerdown brand of upmarket oils, teas and chocolate mints.
A sprightly and silver-haired figure with bushy white eyebrows, Colman exuded a courteous, old-world charm. He spent 47 years with Reckitt and Colman, including nine as chairman, but after selling up in 1995 he was determined to take on a new project, preferably centred on the farm he had inherited three decades earlier in the Hampshire Downs, where the main crop was peas……….
Michael JerEmiah Colman was born in Eaton Place, London, on July 7 1928, the second of three children of Sir Jeremiah Colman, the second baronet, and his wife Gwen, a scion of the Tritton baronets. The Colman baronetcy had been created in 1907 for his grandfather, also Jeremiah, who developed the mustard business into an international concern.
Colman’s Mustard had started in 1814 at Stoke Holy Cross, a Norfolk watermill, when the first Jeremiah Colman started milling mustard and flour to produce the hot flavour so beloved by the roast-beef-eating classes of England. In the 1950s the company merged with its longtime associate Reckitt’s of Hull, selling such quintessentially English products as Robinson’s barley water, Jif lemon juice, Brasso and Windolene.
Young Michael was 8 when the family moved to Malshanger, a 16-bedroom Regency pile with an arboretum, a cricket pitch and a Tudor tower built by the last pre-Reformation Archbishop of Canterbury, William Warham. He was raised in a near-Edwardian environment with an extensive staff including five gardeners and eight woodmen. He learnt to drive at 11 and never lost his love for a fine car, though during the war his mother donated the family Rolls-Royce to the War Office. It was spotted in Paris after liberation…………
In 1961 he succeeded in the baronetcy, inheriting Summerdown farm in Hampshire and Malshanger. He also had a house in Belgravia and an estate near Blairgowrie in Scotland, where he enjoyed walking and shooting in August………..
Colman, whose ancestors had been puritanical Methodists until the first baronet joined the Church of England, was appointed First Church Estates Commissioner, equivalent of chairman, in 1993. This was a time when the Church had lost £800 million in property speculation. “They’d never had a commercial man before. They were in some disarray,” he told the Telegraph magazine……..
He also served as president of the Council of Royal Warrant Holders, on the board of the lighthouse authority Trinity House and as a council member of the Scout Association. From 1991 to 1992 he was master of the Skinners’ Company
Colman met Judy, the daughter of Vice-Admiral Sir Peveril William-Powlett, Governor of Southern Rhodesia, at a party for his brother’s 21st birthday. They were married at St Martin-in-the-Fields in 1955 by the Archbishop of Canterbury Geoffrey Fisher, who attracted press attention by referring in his sermon to the irrevocable nature of marriage vows at a time when Princess Margaret and the divorced Group Captain Peter Townsend’s potential nuptials were being discussed.
Judy survives him with three daughters and two sons, the eldest of whom, Jeremiah, known as Jamie, succeeds in the baronetcy.
Sir Michael Colman, 3rd Bt, born July 7 1928, died December 26 2023