SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE: THE SOMERSET YEARS

The poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge was born in 1772 in Ottery St Mary in Devon, and he died in Highgate, Middlesex.  However, it was during the short time he spent in Somerset, in 1797-1798, when he lived at what is now known as Coleridge Cottage in Nether Stowey, that he produced some of his most famous work.  

Coleridge Cottage - Nether Stowey - Somerset, England - DSC01217. Photo by Daderot, via Wikimedia Commons

Probably the most well known of his works is The Rime Of The Ancient Mariner.  The story goes that Coleridge was walking in the Quantock Hills with William Wordsworth and his sister Dorothy, who were staying at nearby Alfoxton Park, when the conversation turned to a book Wordsworth was reading about a round-the-world sea voyage, and that this provided the inspiration for The Rime Of The Ancient Mariner, which features an albatross which helps the ship and its crew out of an Antarctic ice jam.  There is a statue in nearby Watchet commemorating the poem, depicting the mariner with the albatross looped around his neck as described in one of the verses.

The Ancient Mariner, Watchet - geograph.org.uk - 1707049. Photo by Nigel Chadwick, via Wikimedia Commons

Another work conceived during this time was the poem Kubla Khan.  Coleridge started the poem in 1797 following a vision in a dream – possibly opium-induced, as Coleridge was in the habit of using opium to ease his health issues.  However, the poem was never completed because while he was composing it he had an unwelcome visitor from Porlock who interrupted his train of thought.  Since then the phrase “person from Porlock”, or just Porlock, has been used as a reference to an unwanted visitor who interrupts the writer’s creative flow. 

It was also during his time in Somerset that Coleridge composed a trio of poems known as the “conversation poems”: This Lime-Tree Bower My Prison, Frost at Midnight and The Nightingale.  In 1798 he teamed up with his new chum Wordsworth to produce a joint volume of poetry called Lyrical Ballads.  This is widely recognised as marking the birth of the English ‘romantic age’.  The Lime-Tree Bower My Prison includes an entrancing description of the charms of the Quantocks, referring to: “the many steepled tract magnificent”; the view towards the Bristol channel with “the slip of smooth clear blue betwixt two isles”; the elms whose “branches gleam a darker hue through the late twilight”; and the birds – “the bat wheels silent by, and not a swallow twitters”.  In fact, Coleridge wrote this passage from the point of view of one of his friends, who had gone off to enjoy the hills while Coleridge was forced to stay behind at Nether Stowey after an accident involving boiling milk.

Newton, Bicknoller, and Quantock Hills - geograph.org.uk - 93580. Photo by Martin Southwood, via Wikimedia Commons

The village of Nether Stowey lies midway between Watchet and Bridgwater, just below the eastern flank of the Quantocks.  Coleridge Cottage, in Lime St, is now run by the National Trust and open to visitors.  There is a pub opposite called The Ancient Mariner in a nod to the famous poem.  Another point of interest in the village is the ancient Nether Stowey Castle, of which only the foundations of the keep remain.  It is believed that the castle was destroyed during the 12^th Century Civil War.

Map of the area.