- Grade II-listed Thomas Poole House is named after its famous owner
A six-bedroom Georgian house regularly visited by poets William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge has been put on the market for £925,000.
The Grade II-listed Thomas Poole House is named after its famous owner who was friends with the pair and even inspired some of their work.
The home in Nether Stowey, Somerset has a blue plaque commemorating the wealthy farmer and tanner’s friendship with the two English Romantic poets.
Poole was well-read and educated but self-taught as his father refused to let him go to university.
He formed friendships with many influential men of his time, including inventor Humphry Davy, the Wedgwood brothers and several other writers like Charles Lamb and Robert Southey.
A six-bedroom Georgian house regularly visited by poets William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge has been put on the market for £925,000
The Grade II Listed Thomas Poole House is named after its famous owner who was friends with the pair and even inspired some of their work
Thomas Poole, who owned the house, was well-read and educated but self-taught as his father refused to let him go to university
Poole formed friendships with many influential men of his time, including inventor Humphry Davy, the Wedgwood brothers and several other writers like Charles Lamb and Robert Southey
But it was his friendship with Coleridge that was most notable.
The two men met in 1794 and shared similar political views. Poole and some friends became benefactors to Coleridge and he then helped him find a cottage in Nether Stowey and built a gate connecting their gardens.
Coleridge’s time in Somerset was his most productive. He was a frequent visitor at his neighbour’s, sometimes studying in Poole’s book parlour and sometimes writing – he composed This Lime-Tree Bower My Prison in Poole’s garden.
In 1797 Poole helped find nearby Alfoxton House for Wordsworth and his wife, essentially enabling the literary partnership with Coleridge.
The side of Thomas Poole House facing onto the main road through the village, Castle Street
The Grade II Listed home has been well restored over the years
The property has 5,052 sq ft of accommodation
The two English Romantic poets could have often sat out in the garden while they worked
The house has multiple wood burning stoves
One sitting room is decorated with a green-patterned rug
The house is located just down the road from The Thomas Poole Library in Nether Stowey
A sitting room decorated with a carpet and rug along with a curved ceiling
The pair published Lyrical Ballads, a collection of poems that are the foundation of the Romantic movement and which included Coleridge’s best known work – The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, in 1798.
After that they travelled to Germany and then the Lake District and Poole’s relationship with them was then largely conducted through letters.
His Grade II Listed home has been well restored over the years and the current owners have preserved Poole’s bookroom, which received a mention in Nikolaus Pevsner’s Buildings of England.
The property has 5,052 sq ft of accommodation, with an entrance hall, kitchen/breakfast room, sitting/dining room, drawing room, morning room/library and events room/studio downstairs and six bedrooms and four bathrooms over the top two floors.
The property also comes with a large attached garden
One of the bedrooms in the upper floor
Another one of the bedrooms
A small sitting area at the top of a stair case
The renovated entrance hall has a wood burning stove
Outside there is a garage and stone barn and 0.75 of an acre of gardens, including a walled garden
Outside there is a garage and stone barn and 0.75 of an acre of gardens, including a walled garden.
Owner Diana Barsham, who is a writer and professor of cultural history, said: ‘The Coleridge connection is why we bought the house. Without Thomas Poole there probably wouldn’t have been any Lyrical Ballads.
‘He carried on funding Coleridge and Wordsworth came to have a deep respect for him and dedicated one of his poems to him.
‘So it’s a very important house for the English Romantic movement, it enabled that collaboration.
‘Nether Stowey, this obscure little village in Somerset, became one of the intellectual hubs of the country and attracted all sorts of other people who came to the house, such as Humphry Davy.
‘It’s a remarkable place because of the architectural details too. From the street you’d have no idea what’s behind that Georgian frontage.
The extra-large kitchen would have been used to host guests over the years
The property is located in the obscure little village of Nether Stowey, Somerset
The property is full of history became one of the intellectual hubs of the country and attracted all sorts of other people to the house
The current owners have preserved Poole’s bookroom, which received a mention in Nikolaus Pevsner’s Buildings of England
The house has exposed timber beams in some places
The property is being sold by estate agents Jackson Stops. Pictured: A large bedroom
‘It is great for parties and entertaining. We haven’t tried to modernise it too much but it has got a very nice modern kitchen.
‘My husband likes to restore period properties so he has been restoring Poole’s book room to create a fitting tribute with Regency bookcases and the right lighting.
‘Every year we have a Thomas Poole day, with an expert talk, tea in the garden and some sort of entertainment such as a play after.
‘We’re having to move back east for family reasons, it would be lovely if someone interested in the history bought it.’
The property is being sold by estate agents Jackson Stops.
The life of romantic poet William Wordsworth
William Wordsworth was a pioneering English poet of the Romantic era.
He was known for his celebration of the beauty and spirituality that he saw in nature.
Born in Cockermouth, Cumbria, in 1775, Wordsworth had a largely idyllic childhood in a plush manor house that his father received for acting as the legal agent of the Earl of Lowther.
But the poet’s early life was marked by tragedy too. His mother died in 1778 from pneumonia, and his father then passed away in 1783.
Wordsworth and his siblings were sent to live with relatives and the home they grew up in was handed back to its owners.
His career as a poet began with the publication of Lyrical Ballads in 1798. The work was a collaboration with Samuel Taylor Coleridge.
The collection was heralded for its emphasis on the everyday language of ordinary people and its celebration of the natural world.
One of his most famous poems was I Wondered Lonely as a Cloud which includes a mention to a host of golden daffodils.
Wordsworth went on to serve as poet laureate from 1843 until his death in 1850.
He had five children with his wife Mary.
The death of his daughter Catherine when she was aged just three was later referenced in a moving poem.
The life of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor
An English composer and conductor, Samuel Coleridge-Taylor was born in Holborn, London in 1875 to an English mother and a father originally from Sierra Leone.
He was named after the famous poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge who interesingly inspired the composer throughout his distinguished career.
After being taught to play the violin by his father, Coleridge-Taylor was accepted into the Royal College of Music at the age of 15.
Having started to write composition with the help of his professor Charles Stanford, Coleridge-Taylor released his debut ‘Ballade In A Minor’, which saw him labelled as a ‘genius’ by music publisher August Jaeger, per Classic FM.
In a fitting ode to his heritage, a number of the composer’s works were influenced by traditional African music.
Indeed, his composition ‘Hiwata’s Wedding Piece’ was so popular that, in 1904, he was invited by the then-US President Theodore Roosevelt to visit the White House.
Coleridge-Taylor’s commitment to excellence was said to take an enormous toll in his health, however, which resulted in his death from pneumonia at the age of 37 on September 1, 1912.