Coleridge Cottage

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834)

Samuel Taylor Coleridge, poet and philosopher, was born in Ottery St.Mary in Devon on 21 October 1772. He was educated at Christ's Hospital in London, and at Jesus College, Cambridge. By his early 20s, he was already considered one of the best read and most eloquent men of his age.

Coleridge first visited Nether Stowey in 1794 during a walking tour in Somerset when he met Tom Poole, the Stowey tanner, who was to become a life-long friend. He decided to move to Nether Stowey following the failure of his radical newspaper The Watchman and his scheme for 'Pantisocracy' which advocated a form of communal living.

With the help of Tom Poole, Coleridge moved to Nether Stowey on 1 January 1797 with his wife Sara and their newborn son Hartley. He wished to lead a simple life, growing food for his family, reading, and above all writing poetry.

Amongst the many visitors to the cottage were the essayists and critics, Charles Lamb and William Hazlitt, and the Wedgwood brothers, sons of the potter. In July 1798 Wordsworth and his sister Dorothy visited and were so enthralled by Coleridge's company that they immediately decided to rent a mansion called Alfoxden, three miles west of Stowey.

We hope that you enjoy your visit to Coleridge Cottage Coleridge came to Nether Stowey in 1797 and stayed for almost three years. In that time he was extraordinarily creative producing some of his best known works.

Within a year of moving to Nether Stowey, Coleridge had written some of his most famous works: The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Frost at Midnight, Christabel part 1, This Lime Tree Bower my Prison, and the opium-inspired Kubla Khan. In Spring 1798 he collaborated with Wordsworth on a volume of poetry called Lyrical Ballads which was published anonymously in September of that year.

Having travelled for several months in Germany, Coleridge finally left the cottage in October 1799.

The Cottage

Coleridge Cottage was built in the 17th century. It had a parlour, kitchen, and service room on the ground floor and three corresponding bedrooms above. All these rooms still exist. A well, which Coleridge mentions, and a privy from the time also survive, as does the long garden which joined Tom Poole's garden with its lime tree bower.

A sketch of the cottage in 1837 (displayed in the Parlour) may show the exterior as Coleridge would have known it. However, in the second half of the 19th century the roof was raised, the front elevation altered and rooms added at the back of the building.Before the cottage was acquired for the nation, it had been an inn for many years. It was finally given to the National Trust in 1909.
The Parlour, to the right of the passage as you enter, contains a fireplace of c. 1800 and a variety of chiefly 18th and early 19th-century furniture.

Illustrations on the walls include Joseph Cottle, the Bristol bookseller who was Coleridge's first publisher, and Robert Southey, his brother-in-law, together with portraits of Sara Coleridge and Tom Poole. The Gillray cartoon for the Anti-Jacobin Magazine & Review, 1 August 1798, mocks Coleridge and Southey and many other radicals of the time.

Other illustrations are of Christ's Hospital, London, where Coleridge was educated, the cave at Ottery St. Mary called Pixie's Parlour which Coleridge knew as a boy and the schoolmaster's house at Ottery where he was born.

Photographs show the Unitarian chapels at Taunton and Bridgwater where Coleridge often preached during 1797-8 and the cottage in the 1890s when it was an inn.

Professor William Knight and Lord Lytton, whose photographs are shown, helped set up the committee which saved the cottage for posterity.

Hie Second Parlour (or Bookroom), to the left of the passage, had already been converted from a kitchen by the time the Coleridges arrived.

The kitchen fireplace and the remains of a bread oven are probably concealed behind the present fireplace which was added in recent years.

To the left of the fireplace is an early 18th-century brass lantern clock by Thomas Moore of Ipswich. The large engraving is of a painting by R.V.Rippingille, 1824, known as The Stage Coach Breakfast which depicts Coleridge, the - Wordsworths and others. The watercolour is of Greta Hall, Keswick, where Coleridge and his family settled in July 1800.There are also pictures of Coleridge at various periods of his life and of his children Hartley, Derwent and Sara and of William and Dorothy Wordsworth and other friends. The plaster cast is of a bust of Coleridge, made by Hamo Thornycroft in 1884.

Stairs, Corridor and Bedroom. The original spiral stairs lead to the first floor of the cottage. The corridor, a later improvement, contains a mahogany open cradle of the kind (but perhaps slightly grander) that may have been used for Hartley. On the wall are engravings of Watchet, Dunster and the Valley of the Rocks, which were all stopping points on a walk in November 1797 which inspired The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. Other -engravings are of the Ottery Church, where Coleridge was baptised, and of Alfoxden. The small bedroom has been furnished to look as it may have done in Coleridge's day. The ceiling profile throughout the first floor is that of the original thatched cottage. The decorative scheme has been carefully matched to surviving traces of early paintwork.

The Exhibition Room occupies what was probably the bedroom used by the Coleridges. On one wall is a three-quarter length portrait of the poet which is a copy of one by Washington Allston, 1814, and was the treasured possession of Tom Poole. On the other wall are images of a young Coleridge, his brother Rev. George Coleridge and other family members. The inkstand, made in about 1815 and intricately decorated in 'Boulle' style, belonged to Coleridge. In the showcase are books, first editions, manuscripts and other objects associated with the poet.

Contributed by: Jayne Turvey