Ruins for a poet

The poet Richard Barnfield was born here - at Norbury Manor.  As you can see, the building has beens torn down and all that is left is this ruined site, although the moat that surrounded the old manor-house is still here. It’s green in this photo, because of all the algae in it.

Richard Barnfield, as the phrase goes “did not fulfil his early promise”.  Born in 1574, two of his sonnets were good enough to be accidentally ascribed to Shakespeare, but he seems to have stopped bothering with poetry by the time he was twenty-five. 
Pretty much no-one has heard of him; and there is no memorial to him, either here in Norbury, or in nearby Stone where he lived most of his life.
Shame.

These ruins are reached on a public footpath about three hundred yards from Norbury Junction  They are not easy to reach by car