Still, I have been no one's enemy but my own. My easy nature, either in drinking or anything else, was always ready to submit to persuasions of profligate companions, who often led me into snares.

The Cottage has been restored using traditional building methods and opened to the public. John Clare: A Reference Guide. Today children at the John Clare School Helpston's primary parade through the village and place their 'midsummer cushions' around Clare's gravestone (which has the inscriptions "To the Memory of John Clare The Northamptonshire Peasant Poet" and "A Poet is Born not Made") on his birthday in honour of their most famous resident.

His biographer Jonathan Bate states that Clare was "the greatest labouring-class poet that England has ever produced. John Clare (13 July 1793 – 20 May 1864) was an English poet the son of a farm labourer who came to be known for his celebratory representations of the English countryside and his lamentation of its disruption.