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A land of poets

By Cindy-Lou Dale

Traveling towards Exeter in Devon, I happened upon one of the oldest and most historic market towns in England -- Ottery St. Mary, sheltered by swollen hills and surrounded by hamlets whose names reflect similar ancestry.

One of the locals confided that Ottery St. Mary had a history dating back beyond the Doomsday Book. “William of Orange dined at Ottery St. Mary in 1688, on his way to the palace to claim the crown from James 1,” he said. As if to affirm this statement bells began to toll from the 14th century Church of St. Mary, which crowned the hill over the town.

Did you know?

• Author William Makepeace Thackeray included the town, Ottery St. Mary, under the name Clavering St. Mary in his autobiographical Pendennis.

• Ottery St. Mary has featured in the Harry Potter books as Ottery St. Catchpole.

• Devon has provided inspiration for a host of literary greats down the centuries. Many of them lived in Devon, some holidayed there, many remained – writers such as Charles Dickens, Agatha Christie, Thomas Hardy, Jane Austen, Arthur Conan Doyle, R D Blackmore, John Keets, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Oscar Wilde, Rudyard Kipling, Henry James, Rupert Brooke, Lord Alfred Tennyson, Henry Williamson, Shelley and Wordsworth.

I wandered about and spoke with various stall keepers at the town’s weekend market and discovered this was indeed a little town with a very long history.

On October 21st 1772, in Ottery St. Mary, which was then a small village, Ann and John Coleridge (the vicar/school master) had their tenth baby. Two months later the baby was christened Samuel Taylor Coleridge, who would later become one of the greatest intellectual forces of his time; an extraordinary mind, a visionary who passionately believed in the role of the imagination.

Nine years later John Coleridge died and young Samuel was sent away to a London charity school for children of the clergy where he soon earned first place in his class. The death of two siblings inspired one of his first poems, “Monody”.

Major Ottery St. Mary Events

• For reasons that are now relics, since the days of old, every year on November 5th,  flaming tar barrels are lugged through the streets of Ottery St. Mary for the amusement of its townsfolk and visitors. Starting with the junior barrels in late afternoon and ending much later with a huge bonfire -- over 10 meters tall and crowned with an effigy of Guy Fawkes.

• On the Saturday before the Tar Barrel Rolling, a Carnival Night is celebrated with spectacular floats, parades and marchers from neighboring towns and villages.

• The Pixies “take their revenge” on the Saturday near midsummer’s day by way of the children re-enacting an ancient legend whereby they capture the church’s bell-ringers and secret them away in their cave in the Town Square. Following much merriment and celebrations the bell-ringers are released and the Pixies return home.

Suffering from neuralgic and rheumatic pains, Coleridge began his lifelong addiction to Laundnum (an opium derivative, then legal and widely used). He went to Cambridge in 1791, poor in spite of some scholarships, and rapidly worked himself into debt due to his drug habit, alcohol, and women.

He had given up hope on poetic fame and in desperation joined the army in 1793. Later, his brother arranged for his discharged (by reason of insanity) and Coleridge returned to Cambridge where he met and befriended Robert Southey. At 23, Coleridge married Sara Fricker, who was Southey’s sister-in-law.

Due to an annual annuity provided by the Wedgewood brothers, Coleridge was able to pursue his literary career. Although he had been diligently creative in both poetry and prose, it was not until his friendship with Wordsworth that he wrote his best poems and started the English Romantic movement.

Coleridge and Wordsworth traveled through Germany for a year. This was where Coleridge became interested in the works of Immanuel Kant and read philosophy at Göttingen University. Putting further strain on his already failing marriage, Coleridge had fallen in love with Wordsworth’s future sister-in-law, Sara Hutchinson, to whom he dedicated his work "Dejection: An Ode". Around this time Coleridge began to keep a diary, recording his thoughts on life.

The Coleridge family moved to Greta Hall (now a guest house) in the market town of Keswick – nestled between the spectacular lakes of Derwentwater, Blencathra and Skiddaw in England’s famed Lake District. Today a 6-day guided ‘Coleridge walking tour’ will take you along the route Coleridge took in his 1802 circum-cursion of the Lakes.

As a young woman Beatrix Potter spent numerous summer holidays at Derwentwater and drew inspiration from the stately homes she lived in, their gardens and the landscape, which provided material for many of her novels.

A few years later Coleridge separated from his wife. Around this time his unfinished poems "Christabel" and "Kubla Khan were published. His opium addiction worsened and his spirits became further depressed.

Greta Hall

Within walking distance of Keswick town centre is Greta Hall, a grand Georgian mansion, once home to both Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey. Today it’s a large family home and guest house encased in a vast garden with a forest and river frontage.

“The hall, coach house and gardens have been sympathetically restored using traditional materials and techniques, making constant reference to documentational evidence,” say its owners Scott Ligertwood and Jeronime Palmer.

“We are the first family to live here since Southey died in 1843. This is a living testament to literature’s history,” says Jeronime. “Living here has created a sense of loyalty as this home once overflowed with family, friends and children of both Southey and Coleridge, which is how it is today. I can feel the presence of the women who reared their children here before me. My partner and I sleep in Southey’s bedroom -- my desk is positioned exactly where Southey had his. It is truly an honor to be able to provide accommodation to people who are really thrilled to be able to sleep in what was once Coleridge’s study and look out on the view of the fells as he once did.”

H W Howe wrote: “Greta Hall must surely have some claim to be considered the house with the richest literary associations in England”.

Indeed, Greta Hall had historically been visited on numerous occasions by Wordsworth, Byron, Keats, Shelley, Sir Walter Scott, Beaumont, De Quincey, Dr. Arnold, Sir John Stuart Mill, Ruskin, Humphrey Davey, Lamb and Hazlitt.

Coleridge continued his studies and wrote on current affairs, philosophy, theology and literature and enjoyed an almost legendary reputation among the younger Romantics.

His health failing, Coleridge moved to the residence of his pharmacist, James Gillman, in London, in the vain hope of lessening his drug intake. During this time he lived on the verge of suicide and rarely left the house. His relationship with his children had declined to the extent that relatives and friends had to take up a collection to send his son to school. 

Whilst in London he finished the Biographia Literaria 1816 and soon thereafter "Sibylline Leaves. Coleridge committed himself to religious and sociology works and later published “Aids to Reflection and “Church and State”. He was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1824.

Ten years later he died penniless in his attic room at No. 3, The Grove, Highgate, London (later home to writer J B Priestley) and is buried in St. Michael’s Church in Highgate, leaving only books and manuscripts behind. An autopsy carried out on Coleridge's body revealed that he had been suffering from an enlarged heart.

Complete works by Samuel Taylor Coleridge can be viewed at Kings College, London, the University of Newcastle and Oxford University.

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