John Dunn

Saxons on Sulby Road

Monday, 9 February 2026 at 19:38

Experimental Archaeology at the Viking ship museum in Roskilde. The Saxon river boats would have been much smaller, but similar principles apply

Saxons on Sulby Road

(Listen to audio on Wheels from Ivy Cottage podcast, on Apple, Spotify etc)

I cycled southwards, along Sulby Road. An ancient Road, which centuries ago was chosen as the county boundary between Northamptonshire and Leicestershire, taking up the role temporarily abandoned by the rivers Welland and Avon. Sulby Road in fact crosses the watershed between the two. At the time of the embryonic Saxon shires, or shares of land, the Midlands were an area of dense and near-impenetrable woodland. Boat travel along rivers was the principal and often only means of transport across country. Travel West-East at this point would have meant hauling a boat out of the Avon and dragging it on sleds and rollers over the watershed and into the Welland. Sulby Road, then a track in the woodland, may have witnessed the tortuously slow progress of such boat-haulings. Did Offa and the other Mercian kings pass this way as they traversed their Saxon realm.

Having passed through Welford, I headed towards South Kilworth, dropping down the steep contours of Downtown Hill from 554 feet at the roadside trig point, to 52 feet in the Avon Valley below. After first crossing the Grand Union Canal, the next bridge is over the River Avon. Were the Saxon’s boats dropped back into the water here after the long haul from the Welland, or did they manage the feat higher up at Welford? What does remain of the Saxons here is the county boundary between Leicestershire and Northamptonshire,a duty falling upon the Avon, as fulfilled by the Welland over the other side of the watershed.

To the left of the bridge over the Avon, the river has been dammed back as Stanford reservoir, named after the nearby village.The reservoir was built in 1928 and, as the Leicestershire & Rutland Ornithological Society tells us on its website, lies on an imaginary line drawn between the Wash and the Severn, a proven ‘flyway’ for migrating birds across the centre of England.

That proven flyway follows the same trajectory as the proven waterway followed by the Saxons, the Welland flowing from the Wash in the East, the Avon flowing to the Severn in the West, but with this arduous overland connection up and over the watershed.

© John Dunn.

Was there an airfield here once?

Saturday, 24 January 2026 at 21:25

Carpet bagger at Harrington

Was there an airfield here once?

(Listen to audio on Wheels from Ivy Cottage podcast)

I cycled up the rise to Kelmarsh, through a chorus of birdsong, after a shower of warm summer rain, passing the church at the summit to my right.

Crossing the main road, I passed estate cottages to my left.

A plaque recorded a project at the height of World War Two to rehouse people rendered homeless by a domestic fire which got out of control during a strong wind.

THESE 10 COTTAGES
WERE REBUILT IN 1948
BY COL. C. G. LANCASTER MP
ON THE SITE OF 13 ELIZABETHAN
COTTAGES DESTROYED BY FIRE ON
4TH MAY 1943.

There are undulations and ground workings in the fields at the top of the rise after Kelmarsh, unmentioned on the OS map. Was there quarrying for stone in the past, perhaps providing building materials for Kelmarsh Hall, the church, or estate workers’ cottages?

Or were they something to do with the tunnelling work for the now disused railway up ahead.

An avenue of trees leaves those earth workings and follows the contours round to an area of woodland called the New Cover, a patch of woodland created and managed to provide cover for foxes. For here I’m at the heart of what was once prime fox hunting country.

The farmhouse called Top Lodge stands above the line of the tunnel on high ground, I guess upon an outlier of Oolitic limestone. There’s an airshaft across the lane from Top Lodge, confirming the presence of the tunnel below.

There was a not too distant hum from the A14 away to my right, the sound level exacerbated by a brisk south wind, a warm wind keeping temperatures high.

A water tower noted on the OS map was totally shrouded by dark, dense, ivy-covered trees. It stands opposite the entrance to Wheatfield Lodge Farm, beside which the OS map also notes a “disused camp”. I presumed at the time that this must have referred to an army camp, but why here?

Turning right at Harrington, I headed south, crossing the A14. Immediately on my right a sign reads “Aviation Museum”. As I press on I’m struck by the plateau of flat land opening up to my left, strangely detached from the gently undulating land that I had cycled across until then. Connecting with the Aviation Museum not long passed by, I asked myself, was there an airfield here once? I saw no evidence to confirm my suspicion.

Passing on to other thoughts, I forked left at Foxhall, intending to cycle on to the village of Old. Near Kites Hall Farm, my lane passed through fields planted with purple-blue phacelia and sunflowers. I paused at a gate, surrounded by flowers and breathing in the perfumed air. How wonderful.

After pausing at Old, a village name derived from the (w)old on which it was located, and talking for ages to another cyclist who pulled up beside meat the green for a chat, I cycled on through Lamport and Draughton , before heading back to Foxhall and Harrington. Once more the flat plateau stretched out before me, and shortly before Foxhall, I came uponthe roadside memorial.

My earlier suspicion was confirmed. The peaceful lanes and countryside I had cycled through once resounded to the noise of aircraft taking off from a giant airfield, constructed during the Second World War. Home to the US Airforce group known as the “Carpet Baggers”. Clandestine airdrops and bombing missions left from here en route to Germany and other targets on the continent. The memorial commemorated the two hundred airmen who gave their lives flying from this very spot.

One war was over, and another took hold. The airfield now under crops, trees and fields of flowers held Britain’s first nuclear weapons of the Cold War. Should the worse have befallen the world, Thor missiles would have been launched from near where I was standing.

The Thor missiles were removed in 1963, and the buildings, runways and most of the roads and taxiways were demolished in 1965. The resultant hardcore formed the base of many other roads and buildings then under construction elsewhere at the time. The airfield once again returned to agriculture, and now the peaceful turning of my wheels.

© 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.