Helpston and Althorp
The green heart of England is alive with historical legends and enduring beauty, says Nigel Summerley
Two Northamptonshire festivals not only take place at opposite ends of this long ribbon of land at the centre of England, but both also have links to tragic figures associated with the county. In the south-east is Althorp, home of the Spencers and resting place of Princess Diana; and in the north-west is Helpston, birthplace of John Clare. In the verdant fields and woods between these places associated with the Peasant Poet and the People’s Princess, there is history at every turn, sometimes tinged with tragedy, but often linked to architectural gems.
Helpston, since 20th-century boundary changes, is now over the border in Cambridgeshire. But when Clare was born here in 1793, it was firmly in Northamptonshire, and the county still claims him as its own. The cottage where he was born is a labyrinth of low-ceilinged rooms that feel more Hobbiton than Helpston. It is almost too idyllically preserved, but its continuing appeal to tourists, poetry lovers and school parties helps guarantee his inspired verses will live on.
Although he spent the last two decades of his life in an asylum in Northampton, Clare is buried in the churchyard here beneath a simple stone that says ‘Poets are born not made’. Moss that recently threatened to obscure the final E has been removed – perhaps unnecessarily.
A few miles south of Helpston is Fotheringhay, a name that itself seems instant poetry; willows line the River Nene which rushes under a fine old bridge, near the mound which is all that remains of the medieval castle. Richard III was born here in 1452, destined to die only sixty miles and 33 years away at Bosworth. The other tragic figure associated with Fotheringhay is Mary Queen of Scots. Too much of a threat to her cousin Elizabeth I, in 1587 she was tried and beheaded here – and not too neatly, the executioner striking three blows with the axe.
The dilapidated castle was pulled down in the 17th century but you can still have a drink in it, since stones from it are said to have been used to build the Talbot Hotel in nearby Oundle.
Farther south again is Geddington, another village associated with the death of a queen. When Edward I’s wife, Eleanor, died near Lincoln in 1290, her body was borne back to London and the king ordered that a commemorative cross should be erected on every spot where the coffin rested overnight. The Charing Cross was the last of twelve, but the one that stands outside the eponymous London station is a Victorian reproduction – Geddington’s is the only one of three still standing to survive in excellent condition.
If you do nothing else in Northamptonshire, visit Geddington church one afternoon and hope that volunteer guide Kam Caddell is on duty. If he is, let him take you on a tour that is part history lesson, part detective story, part stand-up comedy, part conspiracy theory. This man brings the ages alive, from pagan times to the Victorian era, via tales of the many monarchs who walked and worshipped here.
Geddington was the site of a royal palace in the Middle Ages. Henry II, King John, Henry VIII and Elizabeth I all came here. And Richard the Lionheart, who only spent six months of his reign in England, is said to have visited Geddington three times. Kam will show you the spot in the church where Eleanor’s body (eviscerated to make sure she wasn’t rotting) lay so that devoted locals could say farewell to this original queen of hearts.
The Nene Valley, which runs down the south-east side of the county, is punctuated with beautiful stone-cottage villages and ancient