Robin Hood's Park (Fountains Earth)

From International Robin Hood Bibliography
Locality
Coordinates 54.113318, -1.782155
Adm. div. West Riding of Yorkshire
Vicinity Near Gouthwaite Reservoir in Nidderdale
Type Area
Interest Robin Hood name
Status Defunct?
First Record 1853
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Robin Hood's Park.

By Henrik Thiil Nielsen, 2013-07-21. Revised by Henrik Thiil Nielsen, 2017-09-02.

Dobson & Taylor thought Robin Hood's Park was a "name apparently applied to part of an estate near Fountains Abbey",[1] four miles SW of Ripon. In this they have been followed by a couple of the better Robin Hood websites[2] However, the place-name is listed by A.H. Smith under the township of Fountains Earth[3] which is not adjacent to Fountains Abbey. It lies in Nidderdale but owes its name to the fact that it (or most of the land within it) was owned by Fountains Abbey. Robin Hood's Park was (or is) a field full of stones c. 1 km east of the southern end of Gouthwaite Reservoir, close to a listed building called Sigsworth Grange. Adding to the confusion over the location is the fact that both the Robin Hood's Wood adjacent to Fountains Abbey and Robin Hood's Park in Fountains Earth were located right next to a Robin Hood's Well. Robin Hood's Park is c. 12.5 km west of the Abbey as the crow flies. According to Grainge,[4] Robin Hood's Park was an area with many rocks, and that this is still the case can be seen if the Google map below is zoomed to a high resolution. In or just outside the little wood below the field is or was the Robin Hood's Well mentioned in the verse cited in the Evidence. Like Robin Hood's Well, Robin Hood's Park was located in the immediate vicinity of Sigsworth Grange, in pre-Reformation times a cattle lodge belonging to Fountains Abbey.[5]

Robin Hood's Park was not in objective terms an 'enclosed tract of land held by royal grant or prescription for keeping beasts of the chase'[6], neither, I think, can it have been a park in the sense of an ornamental park, a phenomenon we tend to connect with mansions, towns or cities. If the former was the intended sense of 'park' in 'Robin Hood's Park', those who (first) applied the name to this field must have imagined Robin Hood as some sort of huntsman sprite or goblin. Yet the locality to which the name was applied was a field, not a wood, in a pasture area, so it is very likely the signification of 'park' is here that of an 'enclosed piece of ground for pasture or tillage; a field; a parrock or paddock', a sense in evidence from 1581 to 1899 and used mainly in Ireland, Scotland, and the north of England.[7]

Macquoid, the 1883 Allusion below, mentions the park and well near Sigsworth Grange but does not quote the verse cited in the 1863 Evidence or add anything of substance to the passage in Grainge.[8] Note that the verse quoted in the 1863 Evidence is said elsewhere to have been written by Walter Scott for use as an inscription for Robin Hood's Well at Fountains Abbey. 'Doubergill' cited in the Evidence is now Dauber Gill.

The earliest source I have found for this place-name is the O.S. 6" map of the area published in 1853 (see Maps section below). It is not included in the 1838 tithe award for Fountains Earth.[9]

Allusion

Gazetteers

Sources

Maps

Background

Also see

Notes