How Children Lost the Right to Roam in Four Generations:
. . .
The contrast between Edward and George's childhoods is highlighted in a report which warns that the mental health of 21st-century children is at risk because they are missing out on the exposure to the natural world enjoyed by past generations.
[John] Clare had cause to look back longingly on "nature's preserve" where he grew up, "the lonely nooks in the fields & woods & my favorite spots ... before enclosure [.pdf] destroyed them."
For centuries the village had lain among huge fields, woods, heath, and wasteland . . . Now fences and other barriers enclosed [.pdf] the open and common lands for private use, setting rectangular bounds on a world that once centered in Helpston and ranged out freely in the circle of a child's roving.
That "wandering scene" is gone, Clare says in "The Moors."
. . .
Turning thirty, Clare had his first bouts of severe depression, on top of poverty, seven children to feed, publishing troubles, anguish at enclosure, and an unwanted move from his birthplace. . . .
Hallucinations and worsening depression send him to a private asylum near London. . . .
