In 1797 the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge rented the cottage. While he lived there he wrote many of his better known works. He was visited by William Wordsworth and other early members of the Romantic movement. Coleridge moved out in 1799 and the building was refurbished. Almost 100 years after his occupation some of his admirers leased the property and eventually bought it, after a national campaign and significant private funding. In 1909 they handed it over to the National Trust who have run it as a writer's home museum since then. In the later 20th and early 21st centuries further renovation and expansion was undertaken, since when it has won awards as a tourist attraction.