Robin Hood and Little John (Bradford)
By Henrik Thiil Nielsen, 2013-07-26. Revised by Henrik Thiil Nielsen, 2017-12-06.
According to William Cudworth,[1] the hostelry Robin Hood and Little John was built in 1622 and demolished in 1800. It was situated in Hunt Yard, in the village of Great Horton (now a south-western ward of Bradford). In present day terms Hunt Yard is just west of Beckside Road and immediately north of Great Horton Road, an area where Great Horton Methodist Church is now located. If, as Cudworth implies, the inn was named Robin Hood and Little John from the start, is it perhaps the oldest known inn to have carried that name?
The "Fair Rebecca" referred to in the 1886 Allusion was the ghost of a local beauty who, according to legend, haunted the area after being murdered by her lover who had promised to marry her. Her dying words were reported to have been that "she would come ageean as long as holly grew green".
Allusions
IRHB comments
The murderer of "Fair Rebecca" was a man. I wonder what he was doing at a "hen drinking"?[2]
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
- Cudworth, William. Rambles round Horton: Historical, Topographical, and Descriptive (Bradford, 1886), pp. 171, 186.
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Notes
- ↑ Cudworth, William. Rambles round Horton: Historical, Topographical, and Descriptive (Bradford, 1886), p. 186.
- ↑ For "Fair Rebecca", see Cudworth, op. cit., p. 171.