John Dunn

Drifting in Pickworth

Monday, 19 January 2026 at 21:17

John Clare by Thomas Grimshaw (1844) Northamptonshire Central Library

Drifting in Pickworth

(Listen to audio on Wheels from Ivy Cottage podcast)

I rounded a bend just north of Pickworth in Rutland, and passed a wide off-road area in front of a gated field. Picnic gold for this motorcyclist! I U-turned to the spot, pulled in, dropped the side stand,removed my helmet and threw my jacket over the saddle. Seat bag unzipped and coffee flask out, I commenced a meal in peace and glorious solitude.

Accidentally, I had found myself at the gate to Robert’s Field, a small meadow of restored limestone grassland managed by the the Lincolnshire Wildlife Trust. In the warmth of early Autumn sunshine, I passed through the gate to take a gentle stroll around the two clearly maintained fields that are sandwiched between Holywell Wood to the West and Newell Wood to the East. Too short and slow to be considered as bodily exercise, I nevertheless less felt soulfully invigorated by that walk.

Riding away from Robert’s Field in the direction of Pickworth, I immediately passed through Lincolnshire Gate, just a name on the Ordnance Survey Map, nothing visible, but which recognises that the Rutland-Lincolnshire border crosses the lane just south of Robert’s Field.

On the grass verge in front of the church at Pickworth is an information board. Needless to say I was enticed to pull up.

The verge itself was part of the wide droving road called The Drift, that passed through Pickworth. During the golden age of droving between 1700 and 1850, today’s quiet lane would have been, occasionally, packed solid with beasts of all kind, principally cattle but also pigs, geese, turkeys and more, as they were driven to and from markets. Why The Drift? As it was important that the stock ended the journey in good condition, beasts were ‘drifted’ at only 12-15 miles a day.

Looking at the Ordnance Survey Map it is possible to see how The Drift connects with lanes and bridleways that run in a broadly West-East direction. My personal assessment is that the livestock passing through Pickworth would have been ‘drifted’ from the markets in Melton Mowbray and the Midlands more generally, on a route eastwards to Downham Market and beyond to Norwich, Kings Lynn and other population centres.

And Pickworth’s church? I had a look inside. A small affair reflecting the shrunken size of the village. A bigger church once served a larger village here in the Middle Ages. That fell into ruin with the depopulation of the village, but serving to inspire a poem of social commentary by John Claire. Here are the first four verses of a longer poem entitled

ELEGY ON THE RUINS OF PICKWORTH,
RUTLANDSHIRE.
HASTlLY COMPOSED, AND WRITTEN WITH A PENCIL ON
THE SPOT.

These buried ruins, now in dust forgot,
These heaps of stone the only remnants seen,—
" The Old Foundations" still they call the spot,
Which plainly tells inquiry what has been—

A time was once, though now the nettle grows
In triumph o'er each heap that swells the ground,
When they, in buildings pil'd, a village rose,
With here a cot, and there a garden crown'd.

And here while grandeur, with unequal share,
Perhaps maintain'd its idleness and pride.
Industry's cottage rose contented there,
With scarce so much as wants of life supplied.

Mysterious cause ! still more mysterious planned,
(Although undoubtedly the will of Heaven :)
To think what careless and unequal hand
Metes out each portion that to man is given.

© John Dunn.

The road to Rutland by motorcycle

Tuesday, 13 January 2026 at 10:17

The road to Rutland by motorcycle

(Listen to audio on Wheels from Ivy Cottage podcast)

I turned right off the A427, just to the east of the A6 Market Harborough bypass, picking up the B664 northeastwards, on a similar course to the River Welland.

The road then cuts out a wide bend in the river, passing straight over high ground between the spring line villages of Sutton Bassett and Weston by Welland.

The high ground here is an outlier of the iron infused Jurrassic limestone,formerly quarried further east to feed the furnaces of steelworks at Corby.

Itis the iron that gives the rich golden hue to the stone in the cottages and churches that I passed through, village to village. These villages offer visual delights only surpassed by the beauty of the undulating landscape, as the road descends to cross the River Welland and its floodplain, to rise once more after Medbourne, only to descend once more to Stockerston, after which it crosses the Eye Brook over a narrow humpbacked bridge.

Crossing the Welland I passed over the ancient boundary between Northamptonshire and Leicestershire. Crossing the Eye Brook, I passed an equally historic boundary between Leicestershire and Rutland.

Once in Rutland, I climbed steeply out of the Eye valley via two dramatic doglegs on the King's Hill, after which the Jurassic uplands plateau out, appropriately enough around the hilltop town of Uppingham.

Out of Uppingham, I rode northwards through the hill country between Uppingham and Melton Mowbray, passing through the villages of Ayston, Ridlington, Brooke (where I pulled up to look at the old Brooke Priory, and its ancient earthworks, the evidence for a minor house of Augustinian monks), Braunston-in-Rutland, Owston, Newbold and Burrough on the Hill. The latter village's name means 'fortification on the hill’; and sure enough, Burrough Hill, an Iron Age hillfort rises up near the village on a promontory 690 feet above sea level, commanding views over the surrounding countryside for miles around.

I picnicked beside the little lane to Great Dalby, between the hillfort and Salter’s Hill, on a bridleway which might well have been an old saltway in ages past.

© John Dunn.

Deviate from the cosmic order

Saturday, 27 December 2025 at 17:08

Dante Gabriel Rossetti, The Salutation of Beatrice 1869

Deviate from the cosmic order

The theme of wilful disobedience is examined in Beatrice’s Paradise I exposition of the Cosmos. ‘All things observe a mutual order among themselves,’ said Beatrice, ‘and this is the structure that makes the universe resemble God’. This too is the premise of Dante's cosmos, in which all natures have their bent, their given instincts. Just as a flame always rises when lit, a stone always falls when dropped. This is the natural order. The question should already be rising in the reader’s mind - are we like that? Think of that child, who turns spontaneously without necessity to what delights it. The answer to the question is, most emphatically, no. Beatrice explains by expanding upon the theme of creativity with a metaphor from art. ‘Just as form is sometimes inadequate to the artist’s intention, because the material fails to answer, so the creature, that has power, so impelled, to swerve towards some other place, sometimes deserts the track.’ In other words, within the description of the order of the cosmos, Beatrice emphasises that human beings are the odd ones out, with the power to deviate from the cosmic order.

From Child of Encounter

© John Dunn.

Life-changing encounters

Friday, 5 December 2025 at 21:39

Dante meets Beatrice by Henry Holiday

Life-changing encounters

The love of Dante for Beatrice is the exemplar of all life-changing encounters. He met her briefly, she greeted him and walked on, and yet through the encounter his life was changed forever. Why? This was the metaphysical question and the answer was to be found inside of him. Without that chance encounter he would never have left the Hell of unknowing. Eros led him. Lust encouraged him. Loss destroyed him. Rejection and humiliation led him to the wall of fire. It was only Virgil’s promise that he would be reunited with Beatrice that led him through.

‘Now, see, my son, this wall lies between you and Beatrice.’

As Pyramus opened his eyes on the point of death, at This be’s name, and gazed at her, there, where the mulberry was reddened, so, my stubbornness softened...

When I was inside, I would have thrown myself into molten glass to cool myself, so immeasurable was the burning there. My sweet father, to comfort me, went on speaking only of Beatrice, saying: ‘I seem, already, to see her eyes.’

Virgil urges Dante to explore the Earthly Paradise until he meets Beatrice. Before sending him off, Virgil blesses him with these words: ‘there I crown and mitre you over yourself.’ This is an expression of explosive political significance. Dante had attained the power of mind over which no secular or clerical authority can rule. He takes both crown and mitre upon himself. Dante’s decision to go beyond the garden shows it is not just a point of arrival, but the necessary pre-condition for moral life.Under his own self-mastery, his choice becomes a positive act of defiance that resonates with felix culpa, the happy fall. Dante was determined to explore beyond that which we see. Political, religious and psychological freedom coalesced and it was all down to a passing encounter.

From Child of Encounter

© John Dunn.

Act of defiance

Thursday, 4 December 2025 at 21:25

Dante Alighieri

Act of defiance

Did not Dante’s decision to press beyond the garden in Canto XXVII of Purgatory show that it was not just a point of arrival, but the necessary precondition for moral life? He was drawn on to continue his journey by the prospect of meeting Beatrice. In tempting him beyond the garden Beatrice assumed the role of Eve.

Was not Milton’s Eve aware of vain labours in a garden ever more luxuriant and forever on the verge of wilderness? The argument with Eve in Book IX of Paradise Lost exposed Adam to the truth of what Eve had known all along. Their strained contentment in the Garden was no way to live - docile, passive and slaves to nature. In Book XII, Adam proclaims that the good resulting from the Fall that Eve induced is ‘more wonderful’ than the goodness in creation. He exclaims:

Oh goodness infinite, goodness immense!


That all this good of evil shall produce,


And evil turn to good; more wonderful


Than that which by creation first brought forth


Light out of darkness!

Sin and transgression became a positive act of defiance that resonates with the felix culpa, the happy fall, of Augustine’s writings: ‘for God judged it better to bring good out of evil, than not to permit any evil to exist’. In other words, Eve is essential to forward development.

From Child of Encounter

© John Dunn.

Life lifted to a higher plane

Friday, 28 November 2025 at 21:52

Life lifted to a higher plane

Originally drafted as Letter to Sara Hutchinson, Dejection: An Ode was later grouped with the Asra poems that were dedicated to Sara. Ostensibly about unrequited love and loss - it announces too the philosophical changes in Coleridge:

It were a vain endeavour,

Though I should gaze for ever

On that green light that lingers in the west:

I may not hope from outward forms to win

The passion and the life, whose fountains are within.

Gone would be a dependence on ‘outward forms’ and his own sense perception of them as the source of inspiration. Empiricism was the ‘vain endeavour’ from which nothing is gained, however long he might ‘gaze’. Love turned him inward, away from passive responses to ‘outward forms’, to the source of all that is vital, the active shaping of an objective world by the God-like ‘I’. And to emphasise that inner vitality he has ‘passion and the life’ literally gushing from the ‘fountains’ of the subjective self. Link passion to the crucifixion of Jesus and Coleridge has death to the world and new life lifted to a higher plane.

From Child of Encounter

© John Dunn.

Coleridge’s encounters with German idealism and Sara Hutchinson

Thursday, 20 November 2025 at 21:42

Coleridge’s encounters with German idealism and Sara Hutchinson

The encounter which swept away the last vestiges of Spinozism from Coleridge’s worldview was his extramarital encounter with Sara Hutchinson, or Asra as he refashioned her name. Coleridge’s encounters with German idealism and Sara Hutchinson came in quick succession, the first in 1798, the second in 1799. It was the combination of philosophical idealism and extra-marital love that was incendiary, not the former in isolation, which Coleridge ultimately deemed to be inadequate because of its Spinozist polarity. Fichte came close, with his invitation to imagine the first encounter of two human beings, the summoning to a mutuality of experience, a ‘reciprocal interaction’. However, the result of encounter for Fichte was synthesis, a reduction of two to one, rather than the feminine principle of reflection, resulting in not one, or even two, but the three of fecund creativity.

From Child of Encounter

© John Dunn.