Robin Hood's Dell (Bishop's Waltham)

From International Robin Hood Bibliography
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Site of Robin Hood's Dell, Bishop's Waltham

[[File:|thumb|right|500px|Site of Robin Hood's Dell, Bishop's Waltham. The scarred area near the centre would have been at the eastern end of the roughly kidney-shaped dell which extended about four times as far to the west / Google Maps Street View.]]

By Henrik Thiil Nielsen, 2018-10-22. Revised by Henrik Thiil Nielsen, 2019-02-13.

"Robin Hood's Dell" was the name of a small wooded area on the northern outskirts of Bishop's Waltham, north of Butt's Farm Lane, east of Chalky Lane, and south of Beechen Copse. While the latter area is still wooded, there are no longer any trees at the site of the dell. A scarred area near the centre of the Google satellite image shown on this page would have been at or near the east end of the dell, which extended towards the west, covering a kidney-shaped area about four times as wide as the scarred area. Judging from early 20th century O.S. maps, the immediate surroundings of the dell were also covered with trees at that time. About 130 metres to the southwest, near Butt's Farm, was a Butt's Dell. Some fifty metres NW of Robin Hood's Dell was a chalk pit. It seems possible that if there was a depression in the ground, as the term "dell" would suggest, this may have been the result of chalk extraction.

According to Thomas Hookham – see 1790 allusion below – "Some years ago a party of the inhabitants of this town [sc. Bishop's Waltham] retired to a recluse dell in the forest, from whence they issued forth during the night; and, their numbers rendering them formidable, committed depredations in the neighbourhood, killing deer, sheep, &c. for their subsistence". According to some, he further tells us, these people "asserted that they were the descendants of Robin Hood". If the dell in fact served as the headquarters of a large band of malefactors (or hungry and desperate people), the area must have been rather more densely wooded than today. The dell is included in all the O.S. maps listed below, but a Google search yields nothing of more recent date, so the place-name must be considered defunct.Template:PnItemQry

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