Ottery’s lasting memorial to its most famous son has been delayed due to a batch of ‘unacceptable’ granite.

The Coleridge Memorial Project (CMP) had won funding to immortalise Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s legendary poem Kubla Khan in stone along the town’s new footpath and cycleway.

The group had raised more than �30,000 from local donations, the Heritage Lottery Fund and the Making it Local scheme, and were due to unveil the monument to the Romantic poet in April.

But John Wakefield from CMP said: “Having waited for the right moment to announce a launch, we found to our dismay it was the wrong moment.”

He said the first sets of granite slabs cut for engraving were not accepted by stonemasons Williams and Trigg as suitable.

Mr Wakefield added: “Another batch was requested, delaying the programme by just long enough for us to take fright and cancel the planned launch on April 28.”

He confirmed the situation is now much improved, and a new date to launch the 70 metre-long poetry stones through the Land of Canaan will be announced soon.

But the stones must be in place by the end of June in order to meet accounting deadlines imposed by the funding agencies involved.