In 1797, Coleridge was living at Nether Stowey, a village in the foothills of the Quantocks. However, due to ill health, he had retired to a lonely farm house between Porlock and Lynton, on the Exmoor confines of Somerset and Devonshire. It is unclear whether the interruption took place at Culbone Parsonage or at Ash Farm. He described the incident in his first publication of the poem, writing about himself in the third person: