Anthony Ashley-Cooper, 10th Earl of Shaftesbury

Who was Anthony Ashley-Cooper, 10th Earl of Shaftesbury?

Anthony Ashley-Cooper, 10th Earl of Shaftesbury, styled Lord Ashley between 1947 and 1961, and Earl of Shaftesbury from 1961 until his death, was a British peer from Wimborne St Giles, Dorset, located in South West England. Atty, as he was known to his friends and family, was the son of Major Anthony Ashley-Cooper, Lord Ashley, and Françoise Soulier.

Ashley-Cooper was the grandson of Anthony Ashley-Cooper, 9th Earl of Shaftesbury. Ashley-Cooper's father was the heir apparent to the earldom and its subsidiary titles, but he predeceased his father. His death made his son next in the line of succession. When his grandfather died in 1961, Ashley-Cooper became the 10th Earl of Shaftesbury, Baron Ashley of Wimborne St Giles and Baron Cooper of Pawlett.

The 10th Earl of Shaftesbury was a wealthy landowner of over 9,000 acres in East Dorset, and received honours and awards for his philanthropic and conservationist work, which included planting over a million trees in South West England. He served as president of the Shaftesbury Society, pursuing the same goals of his second great grandfather, the 7th Earl of Shaftesbury, who had founded the organization as Ragged Schools in 1840. He also served as the vice president of Sir David Attenborough's British Butterfly Conservation Society.