previous | home page | this month | e-mail me | next

Where the Hart is

Richard Bell’s Wild West Yorkshire nature diary,  Tuesday,  15th December 2009

previous | home page | this month | e-mail me | next

ROBIN HOOD’S favourite forest fair was venison, especially in the autumn when the stags had put on fat - the expression was ‘a hart in grease’ - but the connection with deer seems to run deeper than that. My walks include a medieval deer park and forest where you could imagine the outlaw and his band hunting but in the Robin Hood ballads there are some intriguing echoes of some of the deer stories of folklore.

As I explained yesterday, I’m following the career of Robert Hode, the Yorkshire candidate for the historical Robin Hood. It would be difficult to live in medieval Wakefield and not to be familiar with deer; with the Lord of the Manor’s Old Park to the east of the town, the New Park to the west and Sandal Castle’s Deer Park to the south. However local tradition has it that Robin used to set off to the more distant Deer Park at Rothwell Manor House, later the home of John of Gaunt.

After heading through Wakefield’s Outwood, so the story goes, Robin would meet up with fellow poachers at Robin Hood’s Well, which I believe stood alongside the Wakefield to Leeds at what is now Robin Hood, a former mining village in the so-called Rhubarb Triangle.

Work in Progress

I should explain that these drawings, coloured in Photoshop, are my roughs for the stories. Once I’ve mapped out the page layouts, I’ll start the final artwork but now is the time to experiment.

Little John lures the Sheriff into Barnsdale Forest on the pretext of showing him a fine hart.