Ta for that. The castle mound is not that easy a walk tho he's right that
it isn't far. Just uphill quite a lot. Nowadays you have to follow the
winding road. But there's not much there beyond the broken foundations.
There never was much Norman splendour, unless it was a miniature. 30 to 40
ft square as I remember.
The mound is natural with a motte on top.
I wonder if those trees were the bower. More a bower than a single tree. IF
there was an actual bower. One of his refuges was Poole's library; but that
wouldnt strike the necessary tone for the poem, perhaps. But I rather
fancy the poem being written in Poole's - he had an external staircase so
as not to disturb Poole - without necessitating the labour of climbing the
hill in unfit state
Most of what was STC's garden has gone under new housing and its gardens so
that what remains is - I was told - a quarter of what STC had; so the lime
tree(s) may have gone for firewood
L
On 30 December 2013 20:08, Max Richards <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> so of course I googled around and offer you now this:
>
> from A Nation's Heritage, by H.D.Rawnsley
>
> Allen&Unwin 1920
>
> We went into the garden at the back of the
> house, with fine view of the Castle mound tower-
> ing above it, of which no stone remains to tell
> us of its ancient Norman splendour, and gained
> a peep at the gable end of Tom Poole's house,
> from which, in Coleridge's time, ran a pathway
> so often traversed by the friends. Away hi the
> direction of the Castle mound we noted a cluster
> of limes, which may have been that " lime tree
> bower," which once gave shelter to the unwilling
> prisoner, the poet, and which he immortalized on
> the day when, through some injury to his foot, he
> was unable to accompany Wordsworth and
> Dorothy, Tom Poole and Charles Lamb in their
> stroll on to the Quantock heights.
>
> http://archive.org/stream/nationsheritage00rawniala/nationsheritage00rawniala_djvu.txt
>
>
> On 31/12/2013, at 4:25 AM, Lawrence Upton wrote:
>
> > I'll do my best.
> > I assure you I am in GB, just writing about a eucalyptus, thanks to the
> > wonders of email.
> > There's a eucalyptus in Coleridge's garden at Nether Stowey and some
> years
> > ago the then custodian of the cottage wld encourage the belief that it
> was
> > the lime tree as in "this lime tree bower my prison"
> > Passed the time
> >
> > L
>
|