Beware the honeyed tales of mariners!

 

It is claimed that the sight of from the harbour at Watchet, Somerset, specifically the view from St. Decuman’s Church, was the primary inspiration for Coleridge to start the poem "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" , having walked over the Quantock Hills, from his home in Nether Stowey, with friends William and Dorothy Wordsworth. 

In September 2003, a commemorative statue, by Alan B Herriot of Penicuik, Scotland, was unveiled at the harbour.

The man behind the Ancient Mariner, the unsettling character who holds a wedding guest spellbound with his "glittering eye" in Coleridge's poem, has been unearthed by a writer from Shropshire.