Coleridge rented this cottage, now owned by the National Trust, from a local tanner in 1796 and, despite referring to it as 'the hovel', stayed here for three years. He was frequently visited by William and Dorothy Wordsworth, and the three took long walks in the surrounding country together. Wordsworth subsequently rented nearby Alfoxton Park.
During his stay at Nether Stowey Coleridge wrote ‘Frost at Midnight’ ‘This Lime Tree Bower My Prison’, and part of ‘Christabel’, and there are references to the cottage in several of Coleridge's poems, including ‘To the Rev. G. Coleridge’ (ll. 52–61), and ‘Fears in Solitude’ (ll 221–226). Here he also composed ‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner’, inspired by his neighbour and friend Johhn Cruickshank's dream of a spectre ship. The poem also features the local port of Watchet: the ancient mariner sets sail from the harbour, and returns there to tell the tale of his doomed voyage.
In 1797, Coleridge was inspired to write ‘Kubla Khan; or, a Vision in a Dream: a Fragment’ after walking from Porlock to the tiny church at Culbone. Tradition has it that the poem came to him in an opium-induced dream whilst staying at nearby Ash Farm. On waking he managed to remember and write down half of the poem before being interrupted by a ‘man from Porlock’. It is believed that Coleridge drew on the mystical atmosphere of Culbone Church, possibly 1,000 years old and the smallest church in England, for his images of Kubla Khan’s ‘Xanadu’. It has also been suggested that the poem’s ‘caverns measureless to man’ were Cheddar Gorge, which Coleridge had visited with Southey.