Poole House

Poole House is an early 18th-century house located on Castle Street in Nether Stowey. It is constructed of coursed and squared red sandstone rubble, with a moulded stone band at first floor level and a moulded dentil eaves cornice. The roof is slate, with coped verges, and there are three large 20th-century brick stacks. The house is two storeys and an attic, with seven bays. It features 19th-century four-pane sash windows, with additional marginal glazing bars. The window openings have sandstone voussoirs with emphasised freestone keystones; those on the ground floor extend up to the first-floor band, and those on the first floor reach up to the eaves cornice. The doorway, in the third bay from the left, has a bolection-moulded architrave, a pulvinated frieze, and a moulded cornice. The doorway now has a 20th-century four-panelled, glazed door. A late 19th-century shop front occupies the right three bays of the ground floor, and a blocked window opening with an emphasised keystone is located to the left. A bakehouse with ovens is situated at the rear of the property, as is a bookroom, accessed by a flight of external stone steps and featuring a coved plaster cornice. Poole House was the residence of Thomas Poole, a tanner, and it is known as the location where Samuel Taylor Coleridge lived, at Coleridge Cottage, after being welcomed by Poole in 1797-1800.