Greta Hall
Greta Hall, which is an 18th century house in Keswick in Cumbria, was the former home of the Lake Poets Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey. Not only were they friends, but they were also married to the Fricker sisters, which made them brother-in-laws. Robert Southey, who was Poet Laureate from 1813 to 1843, lived in Greta Hall for forty years. Many famous literary personalities visited Greta Hall – William and Dorothy Wordsworth, Lord Byron, Keats, Shelley, Sir Walter Scott, Sir George and Lady Beaumont and De Quincey, to name just a few.
Greta Hall, however, became a girls school from 1872 to 1887 and in 1909 it was bought by Canon Hardwicke Rawnsley who rented it to the headmaster of Keswick school as a girls boarding house. The governors of the school bought it in 1921 and it remained a girls boarding house until 1994 when it became a private home.
Greta Hall’s current owners bought it in 1998, restored it and it now operates as a bed and breakfast establishment which also provides self catering accommodation.
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