Local Route--Ottery St Mary

amuel Taylor Coleridge was born on October 21, 1772 (Coleridge 1), in a little town replete with history, twelve miles to the east of Exeter and six miles north of the coastal Sidmouth, Ottery St Mary. Recent excavations for the A30 road exhumed farm systems dating from the Bronze Age and an early Roman military base from circa 60 C.E. (Heritage). It is also the setting of William Thackeray’s autobiographical, “Pendennis,” under the name Clavering St. Mary, and more recently, as Ottery St. Catchpole in the Harry Potter series; however, all of these pale to the town’s foremost son.

Nowadays, a bus ride from Exeter on the 60, 60A, 60B, or 380, or a car trip on the B3147 off the A30, will bring the traveler to Broad Street in the heart of The Square. The first step onto the pavement on a sunny routine working day, as you descend from the bus or lift from your car, brings smells of doughy fresh bread, the sound of the butcher’s knife splitting a carcass, and the whispers of the elderly making the rounds from the local pharmacist, hair salon, knickknack shop and grocery. The quaintness, peace, and ambling traffic spell relief from the hustle and bustle of Exeter’s thoroughfare. For those who plan to stay overnight or have the full day at hand, there is an eighteen-point Heritage Trail that winds its way from The King’s Arms Hotel to the famous Tumbling Weir (a pamphlet of this walk is happily supplied by the Tourist Office just off The Square). For Coleridge enthusiasts, or for those slim of time, I recommend two casual walks.

St Mary's Church In the immediate vicinity of The Square, a five-minute walk up Silver Street will bring you to the steps of St. Mary’s Church, and just opposite, to the left, the Coleridge’s birthplace and the renovated Vicar’s Home. Unfortunately, both the Old School House of Coleridge’s birthplace and the neighboring Grammar School where his father taught were destroyed in 1884, but there is a blue oval plaque commemorating, so as never to be forgotten, the town’s most hallowed literary hero. A little ways down the lane, the garden of Grandisson Court stands in the place where Coleridge’s birthplace was pulled down. Coleridge’s father, John Coleridge, served as vicar to the Church from 1760 to 1781. On walks from neighboring farms, Reverend Coleridge opened the young prodigy to the expanse of the universe: “My Father…told me the names of the stars – and how Jupiter was a thousand times larger than our world – and the other twinkling stars were Suns that had worlds rolling round them - & when I came home, he shewed me how they rolled round. I heard him with a profound delight & admiration; but without the least mixture of wonder or incredulity. For from my early reading of Faery Tales, & Genii &c &c – my mind had been habituated to the Vast - & I never regarded my sense in any way as the criteria of my belief” (Coleridge qtd. in Coleridge 1). It was this fondness of memory and upbringing that placed the Reverend in very high esteem with his youngest child and set him at contrast with Coleridge’s mother. Not long before young Sam’s ninth birthday, the death of his father would forever change his life, which saw him to London the following spring to attend school. This early separation from home made its way into his poetry as he would later write to brother George, “too soon transplanted, ere my soul had fix’d / Its first domestic loves; and hence through life / Chasing chance started friendships” (Coleridge qtd. in Coleridge 2-3). But while still living at home, the Church, with its sprawling graveyard, provided the perfect setting for his “greedy, precocious, and temperamental” sensibilities (Early Visions 5). He once described, “and I used to lie by the wall and mope – and my spirits used to come upon me suddenly, and in a flood – and then I was accustomed to run up and down the churchyard and act over again all I had been reading, to the docks and the nettles and the rank grass…So I became a dreamer” (Collected Letters 347-348).

Grandisson's Clock in St Mary's Church Inside, his gaze flowed from the elephant bust with human ears, to the head of the Green Man with snakes slithering from his mouth, to the spread-winged golden eagle perched atop a wooden globe, ready for flight, to the grand Grandisson Clock with its moon and sun and intricate dials. To be truthful, had I not been guided to these various fixtures, ones which peopled Coleridge’s young wild imagination, they would have gone overlooked. In the far corner behind the rear of the Church, lay the remains of Coleridge’s progeny, and beyond the wall in the distance, the former household of Lord Coleridge, sold in the last year. Young Coleridge’s religious upbringing would influence him through the course of his life, even in times of waver. He famously said, “Christianity is not a Theory, or a Speculation, but a Life; not a Philosophy of Life, but a Life and a living process” (Gilbert), and more passionately, “With my heart, I never did abandon the name of Christ” (Gilbert).

Before embarking on the next trail, it is worth taking a breather on one of the benches that line the wall in front of the Church as there is a wonderful view of the town below. Heading back toward The Square, curving to the left past the Tourist Office (a useful stop to find out local events and ordinance maps) onto Jesu Yonder Street takes the fell traveler into the countryside. It begins to get tricky here so it is well worth the 90 pence for the ordinance map. A short walk along Jesu Yonder brings you to Slade Road on the right. A little ways down this road, there is a fork which splits onto a slim lane and a continuance of Slade Road. You should take the slim path, Knightstone Lane, which continues for some ways. It is worth asking a local at the fork, which exactly is the correct lane, if possible, for I made the mistake and ended five miles from my destination. It was a beautiful mistake for unmarked lanes and dirt roads carry one through farms tucked away in pockets and open valleys peppered with grazing cows, silent ponies, and secrets such as an Underwater Camera shop which I found terribly amusing.

If you do choose the right lane, you will pass Knightstone Cottages and arrive at a ‘T’ with Knightstone Road – to your left should be Knightstone House. Take a right at the ‘T’ and follow it up along Sidmouth Road and to your left will be a conspicuous wooden gate, well-marked as a Public Footpath (by your map it should be 52). Travel along this path, pass a massive blue pipeline (either finished or under construction), where there is footpath marker which directs you up a hill. Along this trail, to your right, you’ll pass the famous Pixie’s Parlour, where young Coleridge spent much of his time among the Pixies, “a race of beings invisibly small, and harmless or friendly to man” (qtd. in Early Visions 51). From this childhood retreat, at twenty-one, Coleridge drew inspiration for his “Songs of the Pixies,” which would become his, “first attempt to re-invent a poetic world of natural emblems, in which the imagination stealthily transforms the everyday into the visionary” (Early Visions 51). When biographer Richard Holmes made the journey, he was surprised to find the initials S.T.C. carved in a recess of the little cave, supposedly where Coleridge carved his, and though he realized they could not be the original given the nature of the stone, he took it as an ongoing homage to Coleridge’s memory. As for myself, about the exterior are engravings of names and dates of inscription, candles and wilting flowers, simple hieroglyphics and a coarse image taken from Edvard Munch’s painting, “Scream,” but these elicited the same feeling of homage as the initials did for Holmes. If you continue along the footpath, you will eventually come to a clearing with a row of houses perched atop a hill in the distance. Before the houses, take a left across a bridge, and you will eventually come to the bank of the River Otter, which played as vital a role in Coleridge’s poetry as did the Church. Written about the same time as the “Songs,” the “Sonnet: To the River Otter,” describes the carefree childhood memories of skipping stones upon the water’s surface and the longing for the sweetness of childhood, “What happy, and what mournful hours, since last / I skimmed the smooth thin stone along thy breast, / Numbering its light leaps! yet so deep imprest / Sink the sweet scenes of childhood” (Reeve 9). In an anecdote Coleridge would later relate in a letter to Thomas Poole, River Otter an anecdote which makes its way through his poetry, seven-year-old Coleridge, knife in hand, chased after his brother Frank after the latter had bungled a perfect opportunity for Sam to savor toasted cheese. Their mother happened upon the chase as Sam galloped about, knife pointed precariously at the running Frank, and caught him by the arm. Expecting a severe “flogging,” he tore away to the riverside, said his prayers, and fell asleep among the growth to the thought, “at the same time with inward & gloomy satisfaction, how miserable my mother must be!” (Coleridge qtd. in Early Visions 16) His mother had searched the churchyard where little Sam was often at play, sent the other boys out, and by ten at night had half the town scouring the area. His “savior” was Sir Strafford Northcote who made another pass and came within earshot of little Sam’s whimpering (Early Visions 17). The River Otter, pristine, in rushing silence, will guide you back into town.