Click here to listen to the sounds of HelpstonSwaddywell Pit

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• John Clare and Helpston
• Helpston's natural environment

1. Helpston's wildlife
2. Local environments and wildlife sites
3. John Clare's poems about Swaddywell

• Helpston’s History
• Langdyke Countryside Trust
• The Living Village
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Helpston's natural environment

Surrounded as it is by fields, woods and wetlands, the sights and sounds of nature are very much part of Helpston life.

Tawny owls [click to hear call] call from Royce Wood in the autumn, cuckoos [click to hear call] in the spring.  Swifts [click to hear call], house martins [click to hear call], and swallows [click to hear call], fly over the village in the summer. Foxes [click to hear call] and muntjac deer [click to hear call] wander the streets after dark. Snakes and newts are commonly reported from garden ponds.

This association with nature is reinforced by the connection with John Clare, one of England's foremost poets of the natural world, who not only wrote about the individual species that he found around the village, but also about the changing face of the countryside as a result of enclosure and the construction of the railways. 

Perhaps one reason for the increasing popularity of Clare's poetry is that today's community too faces considerable change and consequent pressure on the countryside as a result of urban growth and the changing face of farming.

You can find out more about the natural environment around Helpston on the linked pages.