This public house (now closed) saw the launch of Coleridge's magazine The Watchman in 1795. Joseph Cottle, whose bookshop once stood on the corner of High Street and Corn Street, befriended Southey and Coleridge whilst they were still unknown, offering to publish their poems for thirty guineas. Wordsworth finished one of his poems in the back room of Cottle's shop. It has been suggested that Coleridge took inspiration for his epic ‘The Ancient Mariner’ from Captain Thomas James who voyaged from Bristol to Hudson Bay in 1631.