Coleridge Cottage, Nether Stowey

The 17th-century cottage was home to Samuel Taylor Coleridge for three years, from 1797. It was during his time in Somerset that Coleridge wrote his finest works, including Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Kubla Khan, and Frost at Midnight. Working with William Wordsworth on their collection of poetry, Lyrical Ballads, it was here in the wild west Somerset landscape that the literary movement of Romanticism was born.

Coleridge was 24 when he brought his family to Nether Stowey on New Year’s Eve of 1796. Having earned a reputation as a dangerous radical for speaking out against slavery in Bristol, his hope was that a new life in rural Somerset would create the calm and space he needed for creativity. While he was in Nether Stowey his relationship with both William and Dorothy Wordsworth developed and the three of them roamed the Quantock Hills together. While they had different responses to the countryside that inspired them, they shared a vision to create a new kind of natural poetry.

From a humble Georgian home, Coleridge Cottage was transformed into ‘Moore’s Coleridge Cottage Inn’ during the Victorian era. Today you can explore the cottage, where you can discover the stories of Coleridge, his family and all of his friends who visited him here.