I visited Coleridge Cottage in Nether Stowey a short while ago, the anticipated haven the poet quit Bristol for to live off the country, courtesy Thomas Poole.

In Coleridge Cottage Garden

Coleridge with his Jacobite sympathies was regarded with suspicion by local residents, not least for his night time walks with the Wordsworths.

The cottage is small, more so when you try to find room for his lodger, a small child, then another, his wife and a servant. The garden is as good a place to spend time as the cottage, the garden he wanted to tend for the bounty it would produce for the kitchen table.

In his time resident at Nether Stowey many of his well known poems were written –

Ancient Mariner statue at Watchet Harbour

the Ancient Mariner inspired by the stories that were told round the folk at the small harbour of Watchet and Khubla Khan during an extended walk to Porlock.

Now there is to be a Writer in Residence at Coleridge Cottage – Rosie Collis – a South West initiative by Writers Places (set up by Literature Works, the National Trust and The poetry Archive). They intend Writers in Reasidence at a number of NT properties including Thomas Hardy’s Max Gate.