Group Chairman, Chris Wakefield, is busy writing four tourist information leaflets that will be distributed to Tourist Information Centres (TICs), libraries, hotels and guest houses early next year to encourage tourists to visit Ottery and learn about Coleridge.

More recently the group have been planning how best to celebrate the completion of the Poetry Stones, a series of waymarkers engraved with verses from the Coleridge’s poem Kubla Khan which are to be installed on the Land of Canaan. Current plans are to hold a community event next Easter Monday, 9 April 2012, and organisers hope to attract a local TV crew as well as the press to the event.

The Coleridge Memorial Project’s (CMP) new website should be up and running in the first week of December and will include an online list of all those generous local individuals and organisations who have supported the Appeal.

Currently the people of Ottery have donated £4,700 to the Fund which will remain open until the target of £5,000 has been reached. At that time the group will be able to fund two interpretative display panels to be sited near to the Poetry Stones, explaining Kubla Khan and Coleridge’s importance in our national heritage.

Commenting on the project, the Heritage Lottery Fund’s Head of South West, Nerys Watts said:  “One of our main priorities is to encourage communities to become more involved with their local heritage. Thanks to the enthusiasm of the people of Ottery St Mary, the Coleridge Memorial project will ensure that the story of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and the importance of his literary work will be understood and appreciated by future generations.”

Anyone who would like to have their name added to the CMP Supporters List can still donate at the TIC in Ottery or send it to the address on the CMP project’s website.

The Coleridge Memorial Project would like to thank their major funders, Making It Local, who donated £18,000 and HLF for helping to make the project possible.

Notes to editors

John Pilsworth, the Hon Sec of the Coleridge Memorial Project, on email jmpilsworth@talktalk.net or telephone 01404 812 737.