Greta Hall

Greta Hall

Greta Hall is a house in Keswick in the Lake District of England. It is best known as the home of the poets Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey.

The house is late C18. Front 3 storeys, with quoins and plinth, centre flush-panelled double doors (Gothic top panels glazed with net tracery), Ionic doorcase with fluted 3/4 columns, frieze, cornice and dentilled pediment. 3 sash windows on each floor (2 to left and 1 to right on ground floor, other storeys symmetrical), all 12-paned, in stone architraves. Large segmental 2-storeyed bow on right hand return side, otherwise 3 storeys with a Venetian window. Left hand return side has a similar Venetian window and a half-bow. Interior has good carved oak fireplace dated 1684 in "Southey's parlour", flag floors and old ovens in kitchens, and main windows with fluted interior wood cases. Simple wood staircase.[1]

Poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge lived there with his family from 24 July 1800 until 1803 and regularly visited William Wordsworth in Grasmere.

Greta Hall in 1843

Robert Southey and his wife came to stay with Coleridge at Greta Hall in 1803 and lived there until his death in 1843. Coleridge left Greta Hall in 1804 leaving his family in the care of Southey.

Greta Hall was visited by a number of the Lake Poets and other literary figures including William Wordsworth, Dorothy Wordsworth, Lord Byron, John Keats, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Sir Walter Scott, Sir George Beaumont, Charles Lamb and Mary Lamb 1802, Thomas De Quincey and John Ruskin.

Sara Coleridge was born at Greta Hall

Later times

Between 1872 and 1887 it was a girls’ school. In 1909 it was bought by Canon Rawnsley and rented to the headmaster of Keswick School as a girls’ boarding house. In 1921 it was bought by the governors of the school in 1921 and remained a girls’ boarding house until 1994.

See also

References

  1. ↑ English Heritage

External links

Coordinates: 54°36′14″N 3°08′20″W / 54.6039°N 3.1390°W