[2] Constructed in the gardens of a large mansion called Dorchester House, the speculative development was intended by Blake to fund a charity school he had established in the main building.

[3] In 1816, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, moved to the Highgate home of his doctor, James Gillman, seeking treatment for his addiction to opium.

[a][5] He remained there until his death in 1834;[6] writing, revising and republishing earlier works such as Kubla Khan, receiving visitors and becoming lauded as "the Sage of Highgate".

[9] He engaged Seely & Paget to reconstruct the house[10] and the landscape architects Mawson's to redesign the garden.

[13][14] Bridget Cherry, in her 2002 revised London 4: North edition of the Pevsner Buildings of England series, describes Nos.