Coleridge’s Cottage in Nether Stowey, Somerset, is one of my favourite National Trust places to visit. Why? Firstly, Coleridge is one of my favourite poets, and secondly, I always feel at home here.

My husband and I last visited this place about 6 years ago when we last stayed in Minehead, pre-Covid. However, despite Covid nothing had changed about this wonderful place. I feel as if I am just visiting the poet as I walk in through the door. There is a real fire going and you can just sit down and make yourself at home by the fire.

You almost expect Coleridge to just drop in from one of his walks to greet you, and his wife, Sara to put the kettle on the fire ready to make you a cup of tea.

Typical meal items and the drying of herbs and vegetables grown in the garden are in this kitchen room but this room was actually added later in Victorian times. Sara would have probably cooked in the main living room as Coleridge wrote at his desk and she rocked the baby’s crib. This would most likely have been the eldest child, Hartley, inspiration for the poem, ‘Frost at Midnight’. Berkeley, their second child was born here too but didn’t live very long, succumbing to an allergic reaction to the small pox vaccination.

The house was a mere two rooms downstairs and two upstairs. Unfortunately, no descriptions of the paintings of the interiors of the cottage at this time, survive. Although we know from the descriptions that the original was draughty, gloomy and mice-ridden!

The design of the present interior is largely based on the diaries and letters of the poet and his friends, and is furnished with objects likely to have been present in a writer’s house in the late 18th century.

The original garden no longer exists either, althought Sara’s well where she would go to draw water is still there, although re-purposed. We had great fun trying to get our coins in the well bucket but several unfortunately landed in the water. Hopefully, they will be retrieved at some point.

The garden is much smaller now than the original plot but the pigs, ducks and geese that the family kept have been replaced by much less demanding models!

A visit to this wonderful cottage is highly recommended and I am delighted to be able to share a little about it.