Coleridge Cottage

Coleridge Cottage

Coleridge Cottage at 35, Lime Street, Nether Stowey
Location within Somerset and the United Kingdom
Established	1998
Location	Nether Stowey, Somerset
Coordinates	51°09′08″N 3°09′28″W / 51.1522°N 3.1579°W / 51.1522; -3.1579
Website	Coleridge Cottage information at the National Trust

Coleridge Cottage is a cottage situated in Nether Stowey, Bridgwater, Somerset, England. It is a grade II* listed building. The 17th century cottage was originally two buildings which were later combined and expanded.

In 1797 the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge rented the cottage. While he lived there he wrote many of his better known works. He was visited by William Wordsworth and other early members of the Romantic movement. Coleridge moved out in 1799 and the building was refurbished. Almost 100 years after his occupation some of his admirers leased the property and eventually bought it, after a national campaign and significant private funding. In 1909 they handed it over to the National Trust who have run it as a writer's home museum since then. In the later 20th and early 21st centuries further renovation and expansion was undertaken, since when it has won awards as a tourist attraction.

The cottage was constructed in the 17th century as two attached buildings. One contained a parlour, kitchen and service room on the ground floor and three corresponding bed chambers above, and an adjoining byre or barn.

The poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge rented the cottage for three years from 1797. As well as writing poetry he was a literary critic and philosopher who, with his friend William Wordsworth, was a founder of the Romantic Movement in England and a member of the Lake Poets. It was while he was living in Nether Stowey that Coleridge wrote This Lime-Tree Bower My Prison, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, part of Christabel, and Frost at Midnight. While writing Kubla Khan; or, A Vision in a Dream: A Fragment, Coleridge was said to have been interrupted by the arrival of a "Person from Porlock". It is unclear whether this really happened or was part of a dream but has become a literary allusion for unwanted intruders who disrupt inspired creativity. During Coleridge's time at the house William Wordsworth visited him and subsequently rented Alfoxton Park, a little over 3 miles (4.8 km) away. There are references to the cottage in several of Coleridge's poems, including To The Rev G Coleridge (lines 52–61), This Lime Tree Bower My Prison; Frost at Midnight; and Fears in Solitude (lines 221–226).