The Wellesley-Coles were a Sierra Leone Creole family of partial Caribbean origin who also descended from Wolof and Yoruba Liberated African ancestors.

[2] Wilfred Cole was a successful civil engineer who was the first Sierra Leonean to serve as a superintendent for the Public Water Works Department in Freetown.

Wellesley-Cole was educated at the Government Model School in Freetown, Sierra Leone where he was taught by teachers such as William Campbell.

Wellesley-Cole completed his studies at Prince of Wales, proceeded to the CMS Grammar School currently known as The Sierra Leone Grammar School in 1918 where he eventually became Head Prefect (Head Boy) in his final year and passed the Cambridge Entrance Certification in 1925.

Wellesley-Cole studied mathematics at Fourah Bay College, whose parent institution was Durham University at the time.

[2] After medical school, he was a House Officer at the Royal Victoria Infirmary in Newcastle where one of his instructors was the English surgeon, Grey Turner.

[4] He opened a private Genera Practice in Newcastle and concurrently served on Colonial Office advisory committees dedicated to medical education and social services in West Africa.

[4] Due to discrimination in the West African Medical Service, Wellesley-Cole mainly practised in the United Kingdom, although he did also practice in Ibadan, Nigeria, and in his natal homeland of Sierra Leone.

[2] In 1950, he married Amy Manto Bondfield Hotobah-During, a Sierra Leone Creole nurse who was the younger sister of Dr Raymond Sarif Easmon and Bertha Conton and the couple had four children.