House & Family History: Greta Hall is a square house of three stories and three bays with a central pedimented doorway. It was built circa 1800 by William Jackson and was rented by him to the Lake poets Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey. Southey, who was poet laureate from 1813 until 1843, lived here for 40 years, with Coleridge sharing lodgings with him from 1803 until 1812. Many famous literary personalities visited Greta Hall while Southey and Coleridge were in residence: Sir Walter Scott, the Wordsworths, P.B. Shelley, Charles Lamb, and William Hazlitt. Southey wrote of Jackson, his landlord, that he had planned Greta Hall as "two houses under one roof…(he) lives in one and I am his tenant in the other. A worthier hearted man never breathed than this my landlord." From 1872 until 1887 Greta Hall was a girls' school. In 1909 it was bought by Canon Rawnsley and was rented to the headmaster of Keswick School as a girls' boarding house. In 1921 Greta was bought by the governors of Keswick School; it remained a girls' boarding house until 1994, when it was sold by the school; it is today a private home.

John Bernard (J.B.) Burke, published under the title of A Visitation of the Seats and Arms of the Noblemen and Gentlemen of Great Britain and Ireland, among other titles: Vol. I, p. 12, 1852.

House Listed: Grade I

Park Listed: Not Listed

Past Seat / Home of: William Jackson, early 19th century. Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey, early 19th century (as tenants). Canon Rawnsley, early 20th century.

Current Ownership Type: Individual / Family Trust

Primary Current Ownership Use: Private Home

House Open to Public: No

Historic Houses Member: No