The Ancient Mariner
Samuel Taylor Coleridge spent some time in Somerset living at Nether Stowey and took many long walks around west Somerset. He got to know the coast between Bridgwater and Porlock well. He visited Watchet in 1797 when the narrow streets of the town between harbour and hill, the ships sailing in and out and probably the elderly seamen reminiscing in the alehouses or watching the activity in the harbour inspired one of his best loved poems. Although the poem does not name Watchet or describe it exactly there are many lines that we clearly written from Coleridge’s memories of the town. It is easy to imagine retired seamen getting into conversation with visitors about their experiences at sea.
In the Ryme of the Ancient Mariner a wedding guest is the chosen recipient of a long and dramatic story. The ancient mariner recounts leaving harbour:
‘The ship was cheered, the harbour cleared.
Merrily did we drop
Below the kirk, below the hill,
Below the lighthouse top.’
Looking back from the harbour wall today as in 1797 the tower of the parish church of St Decumans can be seen standing on the hill above the town and one of the last things a sailor sees after leaving the port is the lighthouse on the end of the west pier of the harbour. Unfortunately the lighthouse had not been built when Coleridge visited so presumably he imagined one there and of course the harbour has been rebuilt several times. In another poem written at Shurton Bars near Stogursey Coleridge described the Flatholm lighthouse in the Bristol Channel and that may have been in his mind when he wrote the Ryme of the Ancient Mariner.
Behind Watchet was the wooded valley that probably inspired some of the last stanzas of the poem. It is still a pleasant place to walk but in Coleridge’s day before the railways and large paper mill were built it must have been very alluring to a romantic poet.
After his hair-raising adventures the mariner finally returns:
‘Oh! dream of joy! is this indeed
The light-house top I see?
Is this the hill? is this the kirk?
Is this mine owne countree?’
The poem ends with the mariner recounting his love of climbing up to the church. From Watchet harbour it is a steep climb to St Decuman’s church up on the hill. Below the church a spring flows out of the hillside and is known as St Decuman’s holy well.
It is fitting that Watchet Museum should have commissioned a statue of the Ancient Mariner from Alan Herriot of Penicuik, Scotland. It was erected on the esplanade in 2003.
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Mary Siraut Page 2 Somerset Reference