Robin Hood Cave Horse (Creswell Crags)
Locality | |
---|---|
Coordinate | 53.262053, -1.200398 |
Adm. div. | Derbyshire |
Vicinity | E of Creswell village; on N side of Crags Road, c. 530 m ENE of Mansfield Road (A616) |
Type | Artifact |
Interest | Robin Hood name |
Status | Extant |
First Record | 1876 |
A.k.a. | Ochre Horse |
By Henrik Thiil Nielsen, 2022-04-30. Revised by Henrik Thiil Nielsen, 2022-05-08.
The Robin Hood Cave Horse is an engraving of a horse's head on a 73 mm long fragment of rib bone which was discovered in 1876 in the western chamber of Robin Hood's Cave in Creswell Crags, Derbyshire.
The following year, William Boyd Dawkins described the artifact as follows:
The most important discovery of the handiwork of man is the head and fore quarters of a horse [...] incised on a smoothed and rounded fragment of rib, cut short off at one end and broken at the other. On the flat side the head is represented with the nostrils and mouth and neck carefully drawn. A series of fine oblique lines show that the animal was hog-maned. They stop at the bend of the back, which is very correctly drawn. Indeed the whole is very well done and is evidently a sketch from the life. As is usually the case, the feet are not represented.
On comparing this engraving with those of horses from the caves of Perigord and from the recently described cave of the Kesslerloch, near Thayingen, in Switzerland, the identity of style renders the conclusion tolerably certain that the palaeolithic hunters who occupied the Creswell cave during the accumulation of the upper part of the cave-earth were the same as those who hunted the Reindeer and Horse in Switzerland and the south of France.[1]
Estimated to be from 12,500 to 13,000 years old, the engraving on the rib is in a style similar to that of cave drawings found at Late Magdalenian sites in France, where horses are the most popular subject, though only relatively few of the animal bones found at those sites are from horses. Now generally known as the Robin Hood Cave Horse, the artifact was formerly referred to as the Ochre Horse.[2] See furtehr the pages on Robin Hood's Pantry (Creswell Crags) and Creswell Crags place-name cluster.
Gazetteers
- Not included in Dobson, R. B., ed.; Taylor, J., ed. Rymes of Robyn Hood: an Introduction to the English Outlaw (London, 1976), pp. 293-311.
Sources
- Dawkins, William Boyd. 'On the Mammal-Fauna of the Caves of Creswell Crags', Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society, vol. 33 (1877), pp. 589-612, sse p. 592
- Wikishire: Robin Hood's Cave, Creswell Crags
- Wikipedia: Robin Hood Cave Horse.
Maps
- 25" O.S. map Derbyshire XIX.16 (c. 1877; surveyed c. 1873). No copy in NLS
- 25" O.S. map Derbyshire XIX.16 (1898; rev. 1897) (georeferenced)
- 25" O.S. map Derbyshire XIX.16 (1898; rev. 1897)
- 25" O.S. map Derbyshire XIX.16 (1916; rev. 1914)
- 6" O.S. map Derbyshire XIX.SE (1884; surveyed 1875)
- 6" O.S. map Derbyshire XIX.SE (1886; surveyed 1875–84)
- 6" O.S. map Derbyshire XIX.SE (1899; rev. 1897) (georeferenced)
- 6" O.S. map Derbyshire XIX.SE (1899; rev. 1897)
- 6" O.S. map Derbyshire XIX (1923; rev. 1914)
- 6" O.S. map Derbyshire XIX.SE (1923; rev. 1914)
- 6" O.S. map Derbyshire XIX.SE (c. 1934; rev. 1914)
- 6" O.S. map Derbyshire XIX.SE (c. 1950; rev. 1947).
Also see
Notes
Image gallery
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Robin Hood Cave Horse: an engraving of a horse's head on a fragment of rib / Creative Commons, via Wikipedia.
Incised figure of horse / Dawkins, William Boyd. 'On the Mammal-Fauna of the Caves of Creswell Crags', Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society, vol. 33 (1877), pp. 589-612, fig. 1 (p. 592).
Cresswell Crags / James Hill, 15 Sep. 2007; Creative Commons, via Geograph.
View of Creswell Crags, looking east / Mello, John Magens. 'On some Bone-Caves in Creswell Crags', Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society, vol. 31 (1875), pp. 679-83; see p. 679, fig. 1.
Rough ground plan of Robin Hood's Cave / Mello, John Magens. 'On the Bone Caves of Creswell.—2nd Paper', Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society, vol. 32 (1876), pp. 240-59; see p. 241, fig. 1.
Section in line 1 of rough ground plan / Mello, John Magens. 'On the Bone Caves of Creswell.—2nd Paper', Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society, vol. 32 (1876), pp. 240-59; see p. 242, fig. 2.
Section in line 2 of rough ground plan / Mello, John Magens. 'On the Bone Caves of Creswell.—2nd Paper', Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society, vol. 32 (1876), pp. 240-59; see p. 243, fig. 3.
Ground plan and sections of Robin Hood's Cave / Mello, John Magens. 'The Bone-caves of Creswell Crags.—3rd Paper', Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society, vol. 33 (1877), pp. 579-88; see fig. 8, facing p. 588.