The Graves of Robin Hood and Little John

You can visit Robin Hood and Little John's grave sites while visiting the UK.

How? Why?

Well, contrary to popular opinion, there is actually some evidence that Robin Hood and Little John were real people, who lived and died, and you can visit their graves.

Robin Hood's Grave is the name given to a monument in Kirklees Park Estate, West Yorkshire, England, near the now-ruined Kirklees Priory.

In "A Gest of Robyn Hode", one of the oldest surviving Robin Hood ballads, Robin is said to have died at "Kyrkesley", murdered by an unnamed prioress and Sir Roger of Doncaster, but the full circumstances of his death are not related. In some versions of the legend the prioress is said to be a relative of Robin Hood.

A later ballad known as "Robin Hood's Death" (first recorded in the 17th century) contains the story which is now considered to be the traditional version (although not necessarily the most accurate version). Suffering from an illness, Robin seeks help from a kinswoman of his, the prioress of "Churchlees" or "Kirkly". She makes a pretence of healing him by letting his blood, and deliberately allows him to bleed to death. In another version of this ballad, first recorded in 1786, Robin's final act is to fire an arrow from the window of his room, telling his companion Little John to bury him at the spot where the arrow falls. Later embellishments of the story add that Robin's first arrow landed in running water, so a second shot had to be fired.

However Robin Hood's grave monument is indeed an arrow's flight away from the ruins of the Kirklees Priory.

The epitaph on the monument reads:

    Hear Underneath dis laitl stean
    Laz robert earl of Huntingtun
    Ne'er arcir ver az hie sa geud
    An pipl Kauld im robin heud
    Sick utlawz az hi an iz men
    Vil england nivr si agen
    Obiit 24 Kal Dekembris 1247

Translated into modern English it reads:

    Here underneath this little stone
    Lies Robert, Earl of Huntingdon
    Never archer were as he so good
    And people called him Robin Hood
    Such outlaws as he and his men
    Will England never see again
    Obit: 24 December 1247 AD

All the local legends and period writings (and those that follow) reference Robin Hood as being buried near Kirklees Priory.

Has the legend been bastardized? Disneyified? Reduced to a legend and a myth? Absolutely. But that doesn't mean that there was never originally a man who bore the name of Robert, Earl of Huntingdon (aka Robin Hood) who was a famed archer.

Furthermore you can also visit Little John's grave site too, which is located at Hathersage, Derbyshire. His tombstone was eventually replaced with a more modern tombstone, but it alleges that Little John is buried beneath an old yew tree. Excavations at the site determined that there was indeed a big man buried there, and that he would have been approx. 7 feet tall in life.

So were Robin Hood and Little John real people?

Quite possibly. Legends and myths have a tendency to distort the truth, and to hide the true origin of what really happened. What we do know is that in the decades and centuries after the Robin Hood legend first gained popularity many theatre productions were made about the famous outlaw. Many ballads. Many stories that were written down and many that were no doubt destroyed by the passage of time.