By Mark McConville
THIS INCREDIBLE 10-bed mansion was once home to the founder of the Romantic Movement in England, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and could now be yours for £7m.
Stunning pictures show the red-brick exterior of the 22,000-square-foot main house leading onto the extensive 21-acre grounds as well as a modern kitchen and indoor swimming pool.
Other striking shots show the huge library that houses around 22,000 books, but it was added after poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s time, spacious dining and living areas and cosy bedrooms and games rooms.
Chanters House is located at The College, Ottery St. Mary, Devon and is currently listed by Strutt and Parker for £7m.
“The Chanters House enjoys an enviable position on the edge of the village of Ottery St Mary adjacent to St Mary’s church,” states the listing.
“There are wonderful views over the parkland to the deciduous woodland beyond. The house is approached by a sweeping drive which runs up through the parkland around the walled garden and rear of the house to the cobbled courtyard at the front.
“The house has been refurbished by the present owners including all the sash windows and roofs. The property has been re-wired and re-plumbed with the pipes going to external mains also having been replaced.
“The house is finished to a high standard and boasts exceptional character features including; decorative tiles, timber floors, wooden panelling, stone, wooden and marble fireplaces, along with ornate plaster work.”
Samuel Taylor Coleridge was an English poet, literary critic, philosopher and theologian who, with his friend William Wordsworth, was a founder of the Romantic Movement in England and a member of the Lake Poets. He wrote the poems The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and “Kubla Khan”, as well as the major prose work Biographia Literaria.
His critical work, especially on William Shakespeare, was highly influential, and he helped introduce German idealist philosophy to English-speaking culture. Coleridge coined many familiar words and phrases, including suspension of disbelief. He had a major influence on Ralph Waldo Emerson and on American transcendentalism.
“The Coleridge family, the previous owners of The Chanters House, had always lived in Devon but the family moved to Ottery St Mary in 1760 when John Coleridge became headmaster of The Kings School,” continues the listing.
“He settled his ‘Tribe’, as he called his four daughters and eight sons, and this was the first of five remarkable generations distinguished by intellectual energy, athletics and good looks. They took the Coleridges high in every profession from the Army to the Law as poets, artists, judges, bishops, and Naval, military and NATO commanders.
“All were outshone by John’s youngest son, the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge, born in 1772, renowned for The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. He never forgot the landscape of his childhood. The little town, clustering around the church overlooking the broad valley of the river Otter, was to be poignantly recalled most famously in Frost at Midnight.”
For more information see https://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-70416740.html
