One contained a parlour, kitchen and service room on the ground floor and three corresponding bed chambers above,[3] and an adjoining byre or barn.

As well as writing poetry he was a literary critic and philosopher who, with his friend William Wordsworth, was a founder of the Romantic Movement in England and a member of the Lake Poets.

It was while he was living in Nether Stowey that Coleridge wrote This Lime-Tree Bower My Prison, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, part of Christabel, and Frost at Midnight.

[4] While writing Kubla Khan; or, A Vision in a Dream: A Fragment, Coleridge was said to have been interrupted by the arrival of "a person on business from Porlock".

[5] During Coleridge's time at the house William Wordsworth visited him and subsequently rented Alfoxton Park, a little over 3 miles (4.8 km) away.

[9] By 1908 the campaign, chaired by the Earl of Lytton, had gained public support including that of the archbishops of Canterbury and York, and raised the funds needed to purchase the property.

The oldest parts of the cottage are now presented as the Coleridge family might have known them, with the original inglenook fireplace in the parlour uncovered and working once more.