Looking back at this rough for the cover of my Walks in Robin Hood’s Yorkshire, I think that I prefer the drama of the arrowhead design to the oak tree dotted with characters that I finally went for. The king, Edward II really at the centre of things, trying and failing to keep the peace between two of his barons, Thomas, Earl of Lancaster and John, Earl of Warenne. One of them was destined to lose his head to the executioner Hugh de Muston, a villain of London, on a hill to the north of Pontefract Castle.
In my booklet, eight walks follow in the footsteps of Robert Hode of Wakefield, who we guess was the son of Adam Hood, a forester, charged with protecting the lord of the manor’s deer. As a forester, like Robin’s outlaws, Adam wore a livery of green in summer, grey in winter.
From Wakefield’s Manor Court Rolls, we know that in 1316 Robert and his wife Matilda rented a plot, 30 x 16 feet, at Bichil, Wakefield and built a house of five rooms. This was in what we now call the Bull Ring, which in medieval times was the town market’s Butcher Row. Bichil probably means ‘beech hill’. Beech was used to make butcher’s blocks because beech acts as a natural antiseptic.
I’ve been re-reading my 2010 booklet Walks in Robin Hood’s Yorkshire, because Radio Leeds invited me to be interviewed about the Yorkshire Robin Hood. It was so difficult in two or three minutes to strike a balance between a brief summary and going into the arcane details that bring the subject to life.
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Walks in Robin Hood’s Yorkshire is still available on my Willow Island Editions website, £2.99, post free, in the UK. Please contact me if you’d like me to send it further afield.
Nine years later some of the walks have changed, particularly ‘The Pinder of Wakefield’ walk, as there’s been a lot of house building to the north-east of the city.