Robin Hood rides again in glory on the big screen, but his grave lies neglected and overgrown in Yorkshire - the true county of his origin and adventures, says historian Barbara Green who is campaigning for the legend to be relocated from Nottinghamshire.

    Barbara, a retired district nurse who lives at Brighouse, West Yorkshire, is incensed that the new Robin Hood movie starring Russell Crowe (May, 2010) continues to depict the famous 14th-century outlaw as coming from Nottinghamshire when she says she has proof that he was based in Yorkshire, and was probably born in the Wakefield area.

    Barbara, who has been studying the Robin Hood story for 30 years, wants the legendary figure back in his "native" Yorkshire, especially as his grave is there, at Kirklees, a couple of miles from where she lives.   

    As the grave - said to be haunted by the spectre of a woman in white - is on private land belonging to Christina, the daughter of the late Lady Armytage of Kirklees Hall, it can be visited only twice a year on special days arranged by the Hebden Bridge tourist office. Barbara complains that the grave, adjacent to a ruined Victorian folly marking the spot, has been forgotten and allowed to fall into neglect.

    "I'm fed up to the teeth that all these films and TV programmes which come out say Robin Hood came from Nottinghamshire," said Barbara. "It's a shame we can't get the true story out about Yorkshire.

    “Today Robin lies forgotten and unmourned in his lonely and desolate sepulchre, for few people know of the grave’s existence or its whereabouts. Why is this so? Should not such a monument be an international place of pilgrimage and Yorkshire, not Nottingham, be the centre of the famous folk hero’s legend?”

    Barbara claims evidence that Robin was treacherously murdered by the prioress of Kirklees Priory, a small Cistercian nunnery near Brighouse, and that is why his grave, pictured below, is where it is. Railings were placed around it in the 19th century.
    Historians have largely ignored the story of Robin’s death and little research has been done into the identity of the nun who bled him to death, or the reason for the murder. This has been partly due, Barbara believes, to the Robin Hood tales becoming firmly attached to Nottingham, where tourism chiefs seem to have a better eye for business than those in Yorkshire.

For writer and astrologer Kevin Rowan-Drewitt, the Castlerigg stone circle near Keswick in Cumbria is by far his favourite ancient site, and he has been to many - Stonehenge, Bryn Celli Ddu, Newgrange, Callanish and Avebury, to name but a few.

    He has visited Castlerigg, also known as The Carles and the Druids’ Circle, more than a hundred times in all seasons, in all weathers and at all times of the day and, he says, it never fails to move, inspire and impress him.

    “Standing majestically atop Chestnut Hill, surrounded by the North Lakes mountains and fells, Castlerigg makes you feel you are on the top of the world!” said Kevin, who has written a guide to the monument, where he is pictured, right. “It has to be the greatest free attraction in England.” 
    Castlerigg was built by the Beaker People 5,000 years ago in the Neolithic period, the new Stone Age. “Using just ropes made of twisted bark and levers of tree branches, these people were able to move local boulders weighing many tons to build a circle of about 40 stones (an accurate number can't be said as some have been removed) 107 feet in diameter in a (using Professor Alexander Thom's classification system) flattened-A type shape,” said Kevin, a school laboratory technician who is also a Reiki Master, a Wiccan high priest, a runemaster and a Tarot reader.

    “Thirty-eight 38 stones remain today, 33 of which are still standing. In the east quadrant is a feature called The Cove (pictured below), consisting of 10 stones, all about three feet tall in a rectangular shape. No-one can be certain what purpose The Cove served. It is aligned due east so could have been something to do with the equinoxes, but my theory is that perhaps it was a sort of ‘holy of holies’ where only the senior members of the tribe gathered.”

    An outlier three feet tall lies 296 feet to the south-east of the circle, although the authenticity of its location is in question. “However, it did play an important part in the discovery of the amazing alignments that are built into the circle for, when Prof Thom visited the site, the first alignment he found was one from the centre of the circle to the outlier, and that inspired him to look for other alignments,” said Kevin.

    “Many ancient sites are aligned with the solstices and equinoxes, but it is unusual to have alignments with the other four festivals in what is known today as the Wheel of the Year,” Kevin added. “Castlerigg also stands on a ley line which starts at the site and runs for 24 miles to the north-east to the wonderfully named Fiends Fell. On the way, it passes through two other ancient stone circles, Long Meg and her Daughters, which is also Neolithic, and Little Meg, which is Bronze Age. Also en route are a Roman road, a Roman camp, several old halls, a crossroads and a possible ford, among many other features.”