To Bainton Exeter Arms Helpston Bluebell Inn to Glinton Rice Wood
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THE POET‘S FAVOURITE PLACES walk by less than a mile to include Woodcroft 4 On the right side of Heath Road, there is a Castle, but this would mean retracing your steps bridleway and a footpath which start very close Start and finish: Helpston back to this point. If you prefer not to extend the together. Take the footpath and then, before you Blue Bell Inn /Bluebell, tel 01733 252394 or walk, turn right and continue on to Maxham‘s reach Scotts Cottage and Marholm Road, cross Exeter Arms, tel 01733 252483. Refreshments. Green Road and continue to the junction with one of the stiles on the right into Swaddywell Pit Position: about 6 ½ miles from Stamford and Heath Road. Nature Reserve. (Dogs on leads please.) Walk about 9 miles from Peterborough. over the grass to the hard track and then follow it down into the pit. The main entrance to the Parking: roadside in Helpston. 3 Turn left and walk along Heath Road. The field on the left was the site of a Roman villa, which Reserve is adjacent to the entrance to the stone Bus service: hourly from Peterborough and was investigated by John Clare and his friend, yard on Marholm Road. Stamford. Edmund Artis. Oxey Wood, which is next on the This is an example of conservation in action, Distance: 6 ½ miles. left, was a frequent Sunday botanical destina- thanks to the initiative of a few enthusiasts. tion. Hopefully, in a few years‘ time it will be a place, Time: about 3 hours. which John Clare would recognise from his OS Map: 235 Explorer, 1:25,000. youth. 5 Retrace your steps back on to Heath Road and THE WALK this time follow the bridleway. There are some attractive pools on the left with interesting 1 Follow the public footpath plant and bird life. It is worth looking Helpston opposite the Blue Bell. It starts Exeter through gaps in the hedge to get as a track, bends round some Arms a panoramic view of buildings and then becomes a To Bainton Swaddywell Pit. The big To Glinton footpath between a field and a high lumps of stone at the yard hedge. Cross the footbridge and 1 on the far right are not turn right alongside the ditch. Turn quarried locally. They are left at the hedge and almost Bluebell Inn brought there for cutting and immediately cross the stile. polishing. Continue on the other side of the hedge. A post marks the point 6 Turn right at King Street, where the path cuts diagonally known by John Clare as across the corner of the field. It 7 Roman Bank. Hilly Wood is should be visible. If not, head for on the left. the cottage and cross the ditch by 2 Turn right on to the Torpel the footbridge. Way footpath. Turn left on College to the bridleway, which 2 Turn right and continue through Cottage follows the western edge of the farmyard and down the track to Rice Wood Rice Wood. the end. The track at the T 3 junction is known as Maxham‘s 7 Turn right along Broad Green Road and, before the Wheel Road until it meets enclosure of the open fields at the King Street Maxham‘s Green Road Woodgate. Turn left up th beginning of the19 century, it was Woodgate, cross West Heath Road the most direct route from Street and continue up Helpston to Peterborough. By To Woodcroft Castle Church Lane as far as the turning left you can extend the Hilly Exeter Arms. Wood ROMAN VILLA LOCAL INTEREST King Street 5 Woodcroft Castle The road linked the Roman town near Water 6 Newton with Bourne and Lincoln. This section, Unfortunately, the castle with towers 4 which John Clare called Roman Bank, is on a Oxey Wood and a moat and dating back to the slight embankment. 14th century, is hidden from view by He used to find small yellow snails with a trees much of the time. It was a black base, which he called pootys there, as Royalist stronghold during the Eng- Swaddywell Pit well as wild vervain and sweet rocket flowers. lish Civil War. John Clare described Nature Reserve it as a “dreary looking building” but the owner, Mrs Bellairs, was a kind, P Hilly Wood good woman. He was employed To Ufford On one of his visits, John Clare found 5 there to “drive the plough” as a young kinds of fern in this wood. On another, man, but he only stayed a month be- he was accosted by one of Sir John cause he did not like getting up so early Trollope‘s “meddlesome and in the morning or getting his feet wet every Scotts Cottage consieted” gamekeepers and morning and evening when the moat overflowed. accused of being a poacher. On a visit with his young daughter many years later Scotsmans Lodge To Marholm He was indignant because he he admired the anemones and peonies in the gar- had never shot even so much as den and saw the swallows nesting under the a sparrow in his life. bridges over the moat. Members of the Bellairs 0 0.5 family contributed to the cost of John Clare‘s burial This wood is still privately owned. in 1864. mile Rice Wood Roman villa in the field north of Oxey Wood John Clare and Helpston Heath John Clare called it Royce Wood after the name John Clare visited it with “his friend Artis”. He first of a local family, related to the car-designing In his childhood Helpston, Ailsworth met him in 1820 when he was looking for a family at Alwalton. This wood is unusual because (Emmensales), Ufford, Southorpe and Wittering sponsor for his poems and had been invited to it is open to the public. heaths were almost continuous, apart from small Milton Hall but, in the absence of Earl wooded areas and parts of the villages‘ open In 1825 John Clare saw 3 men who were laying Fitzwilliam, he was entertained by the senior fields. Locally “heath” was a level area of lime- out the plan for an “Iron Railway” between Man- servants, including the butler, Edmund Artis. He stone, which was maintained as grassland by chester and London. It would have crossed was a part-time archaeologist and John Clare the grazing of the villagers‘ sheep and cattle. Round Oak spring, a pond south helped with his archaeological digs. They When John was 7 years old, because of family west of the wood. unearthed a mosaic floor and Roman pottery at poverty, they could no longer afford to send him this site. to the dame school in Helpston, and he went to His concern was for the look after the Helpston sheep and geese on the orchids, which grew in Oxey Wood heath. After the Enclosure Act of 1809, the large this boggy place. Fortunately the line John Clare found various open fields were divided into small fields, sepa- was never built, but is rare plants there including rated by hedges, and the village people lost the interesting because it orchids, “one-berry” (Paris right to graze their animals on the heath and was 20 years before quadrifolia) and ferns. He collect wood. Barriers were erected across the the main railway line also used to go there to old footpaths. Many village people became north of the village was listen to bird song. It is paupers and a number of John Clare‘s poems authorised. now privately owned. reflect his anger over enclosures. JOHN CLARE‘S HELPSTON Exeter Arms public house He once described Helpston as a “gloomy village This was used as the village courthouse and in Northamptonshire”, but another time said it there were bullock fairs in the yard. was a “happy Eden”. After his death, John Clare‘s body was brought back by train from the asylum at Northampton and was stored there overnight before the burial. John Clare Memorial This was erected in 1869 and stands on the site of the village pond. When there were feast days in the John Clare Country village a greasy pole was laid The Poet’s Favourite Places over the pond and the young men would compete to cross it, the prize being a pig. Manor of Clapham This was the home of a branch of the Belairs family in John Clare‘s time. The stone base of the gibbet from Langley Bush stands in the garden. John Clare‘s Cottage He was born there in 1793. Both parents were illiterate though his father could read a little. The family‘s first landlord charged them £2 a year rent, paid for by selling apples from a tree in the John Clare’s Cottage & The Blue Bell, Helpston garden. After his death, the new landlord put up the rent One in a series of circular walks issued by and the cottage was divided into four. The Clare Parishes in Barnack Ward family could afford only two rooms. The cottage John Clare logo by Roe Yates is currently being restored thanks partly to a Printed by Chadwick Associates 01780 740893 One in a series of circular walks issued grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund. Supported by Peterborough City Council by Parishes in Barnack Ward St Botolph‘s Church and churchyard SWADDYWELL PIT NATURE RESERVE This church was in The name is said to have been derived from a disrepair and the church- sword found in a pool and John Clare called it yard was overgrown Swordy Well. In Roman times it was a lime- when John Clare lived in stone quarry but by the 1800 the old workings Helpston.