John Clare lived in four places during the seventy-one years of his life from 1793 to 1864. More than half of those years were spent in Helpston, the place of his birth. The move to Northborough, a three-mile walk from Helpston, provided the family with more spacious accommodation, but Clare was deeply unhappy there, his feelings of alienation expressed in ‘The Flitting’, one of the poems he wrote there.

After just five years his deteriorating mental health resulted in his move to Matthew Allen’s asylum at High Beach, Epping Forest, Essex. Four years later he walked out of the asylum – giving his famous account of a ‘Journey Out of Essex’ which he described as an ‘escape’ – and in four days in July 1841 he was back in Northborough. But not for long: five months later he was admitted to the Northampton General Lunatic Asylum where he spent the last twenty-three years of his life until his death on 20 May1864.

This illustrated section of the website briefly describes and explores each of these four places

Helpston village (1793-1832)
Northborough (1832-1837 + 1841)
High Beach Asylum (1837-1841)
Northamptonshire Asylum (1841-1864)