Robin Hood's Arbour (Maidenhead)
[[File:|thumb|right|500px|Robin Hood's Arbour / National Trust: Maidenhead & Cookham.]]
By Henrik Thiil Nielsen, 2017-12-20. Revised by Henrik Thiil Nielsen, 2018-05-29.
Robin Hood's Arbour is a square prehistoric earthwork in Maidenhead Thicket. By the late 17th century it was known as 'Robin Hood's Bower', which is still today an alternative name for it. Dobson & Taylor believed the existence of this place name already in the late 17th cent. was the reason Thomas Hearne included the Chiltern Hills among Robin's haunts.[1] The earliest of the O.S. maps liste below to include the name of the "arbour" is the 25" map published 1912.
Allusions
1733 - Hearne, Thomas - Note in Chronicon Prioratus de Dunstaple
[Joseph Ritson's translation:]
Certainly Silchester, in Hampshire, signifies nothing but the city of flints (that is, a city composed or built of flint-stones). [. . .] And what is more, in that very Chiltern country you may frequently see houses built of flints, in erecting which, in ancient times, I suppose that many persons involved themselves deeply in debt, and that, in order to extricate themselves, they took up money at interest of I know not what great men, which so far disturbed their minds that they would become thieves, and do many things in no wise agreeable to the English government. Hence, the nobility ordered that large woods in the Chiltern country should, in a great measure, be cut down, lest they should conceal any considerable body of robbers, who were wont to convert the same into lurking places. [. . .] It concerns this matter to call to mind, that of this sort of robbers was that Robin or Robert Hood, of whom the vulgar dayly [sic] sing so many wonderful things. He (being now made an outlaw) before he retired into the north parts, frequently robing [sic] in the Chiltern country, linked[2] [sic] in the thickets thereof on purpose that he should not be taken. Thence it was, that to us boys, (exhilarating, according to custom, the mind with sports) certain countrymen, with whom we [vol. I, p. cii n.:] had accidentally some conversation, shewed us that sort of den or retreat (vulgarly called Robin Hoods bower) in Maydenhead-thicket: which thicket is the same that Leland in his Itinerary, called Frith, by which name the Anglo-Saxons themselves spoke of thickets. For although frið in reality signifys [sic] peace, yet since numerous groves with them (as well as before with the Britons) were deemed sacred, it is by no means to be wondered at that a great wood (because manifestly an asylum) should in the judgment of the Anglo-Saxons be called by no other name than friðer: [sic] and that Maydenhead-thicket was esteemed among the greater woods Leland himself is a witness. Rightly therefor [sic] did Robin Hood (as frið-bena) reckon himself to abide there in security.[3]
Gazetteers
- Dobson, R. B., ed.; Taylor, J., ed. Rymes of Robyn Hood: an Introduction to the English Outlaw (London, 1976), p. 295, s.n. Robin Hood's Arbour.
Maps
- 25" O.S. map Berkshire XXIV.13 (c. 1876; surveyed 1874). No Copy in NLS
- 25" O.S. map Berkshire XXIV.13 (c. 1899; rev. c. 1897). No Copy in NLS]
- 25" O.S. map Berkshire XXIV.13 (1912; rev. 1910)
- 25" O.S. map Berkshire XXIV.13 (1912; rev. 1910) (georeferenced)
- 25" O.S. map Berkshire XXIV.13 (1925; rev. 1923)
- 25" O.S. map Berkshire XXIV.13 (1934; rev. 1932).
- 6" O.S. map Berkshire XXIV (1882; surveyed 1875)
- 6" O.S. map Berkshire XXIV.SW (1900; rev. 1897)
- 6" O.S. map Berkshire XXIV.SW (1900; rev. 1897) (georeferenced)
- 6" O.S. map Berkshire XXIV.SW (1913; rev. 1910)
- 6" O.S. map Berkshire XXIV.SW (1926; rev. 1923).
- 6" O.S. map Berkshire XXIV.SW (1931; rev. 1931-32)
- 6" O.S. map Berkshire XXIV.SW (c. 1944; rev. 1938)
Sources
- Gelling, Margaret. The Place-Names of Berkshire (English Place-Name Society, vols. XLIX-LI) (Cambridge, 1973; [s.l.], 1974-76), pt. I, p. 57, and see pt. I, p. 285
Discussion
- Anonymous. '[Untitled letter to the editor]', Gentleman's Magazine, vol. XXXVI (1766), p. 400.
- Cotton, M. Aylwin; [Cornwall, I.W., contrib.] 'Robin Hood's Arbour and Rectilinear Enclosures in Berkshire', Berkshire Archaeological Journal, vol. 59 (1961), pp. 1-35
- Crawford, O. G. S. 'Place-Names and Archaeology', chapter VIII in: Mawer, A.; Stenton, F.M. Introduction to the Survey of English Place-Names (English Place-Name Society, vol. I, pt. 1). (Cambridge, 1924), pp. 143-64
- Crawford, O. G. S. 'Place-Names and Archaeology', chapter VIII in: Mawer, A.; Stenton, F.M. Introduction to the Survey of English Place-Names (English Place-Name Society, vol. I, pt. 1). (Cambridge, 1925), pp. 143-64
- Crawford, O. G. S. 'Place-Names and Archaeology', chapter VIII in: Mawer, A.; Stenton, F.M. Introduction to the Survey of English Place-Names (English Place-Name Society, vol. I, pt. 1). Reprinted. (Cambridge, 1929), pp. 143-64
- Crawford, O. G. S. 'Place-Names and Archaeology', chapter VIII in: Mawer, A.; Stenton, F.M. Introduction to the Survey of English Place-Names (English Place-Name Society, vol. I, pt. 1). Reprinted. (Cambridge, 1933), pp. 143-64
- Crawford, O. G. S. 'Place-Names and Archaeology', chapter VIII in: Mawer, A.; Stenton, F.M.; Gover, J.E.B. The Place-Names of Sussex (English Place-Name Society, vols. VI-VII) (Cambridge, 1969), pp. 143-64
- Ditchfield, P H 1901a
- Ditchfield, P H 1906a, p. 204
- Kerry, Charles. The History and Antiquities of the Hundred of Bray, in the County of Berks (London, 1861), pp. 146-47, 150
- Peake, Harold. The Archaeology of Berkshire (London, [1931]), pp. 97, 190.
Background
Notes
- ↑ Dobson, R. B., ed.; Taylor, J., ed. Rymes of Robyn Hood: an Introduction to the English Outlaw (London, 1976), p. 295, s.n. Robin Hood's Arbour.
- ↑ Read: lurked.
- ↑ [Morins, Richard de]; Hearne, Thomas, ed. Chronicon sive Annales Prioratus de Dunstaple (Oxford, 1733), vol. I, p. 387 n. (contd. vol. I, pp. 388 n.-389 n.); [Ritson, Joseph, ed.] Robin Hood: A Collection of All the Ancient Poems, Songs, and Ballads, now Extant, Relative to that Celebrated English Outlaw, to Which are Prefixed Historical Anecdotes of His Life (London, 1795), vol. I, p. ci n. † (contd. vol. I, p. cii n.)
Robin Hood's Arbour / National Trust: Maidenhead & Cookham.
Entrance and SW corner before excavation (1961) / M. Aylwin Cotton (1961), plate I.
Plan of the arbour / M. Aylwin Cotton (1961), fig. 1.