Of all those who have lived in Shefford only Robert Bloomfield has been famous nationally.
Although born in 1766 to a poor family in the village of Honington in Suffolk Robert was fortunate as his mother was the village school mistress and was able to give him some formal education. At the age of eleven he was sent to work on a farm a few miles away and later this experience was to be crystallised into his most successful poem ‘The Farmer’s Boy’.
‘The sporting Whitethroat on some twig’s end borne,
Pour’d hymns to freedom and the rising morn;
Stopt in her song perchance the starting Thrush
Shook a white shower from the blackthorn bush,
Where dew-drops thick as early blossoms hung,
And trembled as the minstrel sweetly sung.
Across his path, in either grove to hide,
The timid Rabbit scouted by his side;
Or Pheasant boldly stalked along the road,
Whose gold and purple tints alternate glowed.’
The Farmer’s Boy by Robert Bloomfield – Selected poems – Trent Editions – 1998
At fourteen he left the farm and went to London as an apprentice to his brother George, a ladies shoemaker. As well as shoemaking he ‘acquired .. much knowledge of the use of words in .. little time’ and discovered a love of poetry and a natural ability to write verse.
He continued to work as a shoemaker and in 1790 married Mary Ann Church and set up house in lodgings in London. Perhaps it was the experience of living under these cramped conditions which made him remember affectionately his life in the country and he began to compose ‘The Farmer’s Boy’ which was published in 1800. It was an immediate sensation selling 23,000 copies in three years.
The wealth and fame which followed allowed him to move his young family to a new home in a better part of London. However his publishers failed and he had perhaps been over generous to his relatives for he found himself in severe financial difficulties. In his trouble he was glad to accept the offer by his friend Joseph Weston of a rented cottage in what is now North Bridge Street and in 1812 he moved, with his wife and five children, to Shefford.