1817 - Lysons, Daniel - Magna Britannia (2)

From International Robin Hood Bibliography
Allusion
Date 1817
Author Lysons, Daniel; Lysons, Samuel
Title Magna Britannia
Mentions Robin Hood's Picking Rods (Chisworth); Robin Hood's Bow Stones (Lyme Handley)
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North to south: Robin Hood's Picking Rods, Robin Hood's Bow Stones.

By Henrik Thiil Nielsen, 2020-06-17. Revised by Henrik Thiil Nielsen, 2021-01-07.

Allusion

On Ludworth common, near Mellor, is a flat stone about eight feet long and three feet six inches wide, and nearly two feet thick, approaching in [vol. V, p. ccxxxv:] form to an oval; on which formerly stood two stone pillars, fixed in round sockets, and tapering upwards. When we visited this ancient monument, in the year 1810, only part of one of them remained in its original position; this was two feet six inches in height, and twenty inches in diameter at the top: the upper part, two feet six inches in length, had been broken off, and removed to the distance of several feet. The lower part of the other, which has also been removed from its socket, is four feet two inches in length, eighteen inches in diameter at the bottom, and fifteen inches and a half at the top. This ancient monument, which bears a good deal of resemblance to one of the same kind called the Bow-Stones, at no great distance from it (noticed in our account of Cheshire °), has received from the country people the appellation of Robinhood's Picking-rods. As double pillars appear among the earliest sepulchral monuments in the Christian cemeteries, it is not improbable that these rude monuments were erected to the memory of some illustrious person, in the Pagan times. We are informed by Dr, Pegge, that part of one of them was used in making the turnpike road leading from Sheffield to Grindlethorp bridge.[1]

Source notes

Note °: 'P. 459'. Refers for information from Dr Pegge to; Archæologia, vol. vii. p. 137'.

IRHB comments

Only six volumes of the Lyson brothers' lavishly illustrated topographical work Magna Britannia were published. Extrapolating from them it is a fair guess that the total number of volumes for all of Britain would have run to seventy or eighty volumes. The first volume was published in 1806. When engraver Samuel Lysons died in 1819, five volumes, covering eight counties between them, had been published. His grief-stricken brother Daniel after some years managed to have the sixth volume – covering Devon – published in 1822, but unfortunately no more ever appeared.

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