Sherwood Forest
England's most famous outlaw never needed a forest this good: Sherwood's ancient oaks outlived Norman kings, and one giant is held up by steel props.
Published
Quick Facts
- Location
- Near Edwinstowe, Nottinghamshire, in the East Midlands
- Status
- Former Norman royal hunting forest; the core is now a National Nature Reserve
- Star tree
- The Major Oak, estimated at 800 to 1,000 years old
- Major Oak size
- Trunk girth of around 10 metres, crown spread of roughly 28 metres, weight often put at about 23 tonnes
- Famous resident
- Robin Hood, first mentioned in verse in the late 1300s
- Award
- The Major Oak won England's Tree of the Year in 2014
- Wildlife
- Veteran oaks, rare beetles and fungi, nightjars and woodlarks
- Nearest village
- Edwinstowe, where the visitor centre and St Mary's Church stand
The tree that needs a crutch
The Major Oak looks like something from a fairy tale, and it is also partly held together by engineering. Its limbs are so heavy and so wide that they now rest on a network of supports, and the tree has been propped since Victorian times. The trunk measures around 10 metres around, and the hollow inside is large enough for visitors in the 19th century to shelter in. The oak's age is an estimate, somewhere between 800 and 1,000 years, which means it may have been a sapling when the real medieval outlaws were being talked about in whispers. In 2014 it won England's Tree of the Year, which is a fair reward for a tree that has outlasted nearly everything around it.
Why the Major is a Major
The oak's name is a nod to a person, not a rank it earned in battle. Major Hayman Rooke, a local antiquarian and retired army officer, described and drew the tree in 1790, and the name stuck. Before that it had been known as the Cockpen Tree. That means one of Britain's best-loved trees carries the name of a man with a notebook and a taste for old things. It's a lovely example of how the Robin Hood legend and the landscape have fed one another for centuries.
A forest made for kings, not outlaws
Sherwood was a royal hunting forest in Norman times, which doesn't mean solid woodland. It was a legal zone where the king's deer were protected and ordinary people faced harsh penalties for poaching. Woods, heath and open pasture were all part of it, and it covered a large swathe of Nottinghamshire. That's the real reason it suits the outlaw story so well. To medieval villagers, Sherwood stood for the power of the Crown over their daily lives, from hunting rules to officials who enforced them. Later, the forest was carved up into great estates. The area known as the Dukeries, with grand houses such as Welbeck and Thoresby, grew out of old Sherwood land.
Robin Hood: myth versus reality
No one has found a definite historical Robin Hood. The earliest known reference comes in the 1370s or so in Piers Plowman, where a priest admits he knows rhymes of Robin Hood better than his prayers. The long ballad A Gest of Robyn Hode appeared in print around 1500. Those early tales don't always sit in Sherwood, and there are rival claims from Yorkshire. They also don't feature the polished hero we know. Robin began as a yeoman, not a dispossessed nobleman. The link to King Richard the Lionheart was added in the 16th century, and Walter Scott's Ivanhoe in 1819 helped make him a Saxon champion against Norman oppressors. The Sheriff of Nottingham, though, was a real office. Whether or not the outlaw existed, the people he was supposed to be robbing certainly did. The stories of Robin marrying Maid Marian at St Mary's Church in Edwinstowe are a local legend. They make a good tale and a nice stop on the way.
What to look out for when you're there
Look beyond the Major Oak. Sherwood's old oaks, many of them hollow, twisted and half-dead, are the real treasure, and the dead wood supports a remarkable range of insects and fungi. Some trees have been standing for centuries. The nature reserve also shelters birds that like open woodland and heath. At dusk in summer, nightjars are the ones to listen for, while woodlarks favour more open ground. Pick one of the waymarked paths and slow down. The best way to feel the scale of the place is to stand under a tree that was already ancient when Shakespeare was alive, and just look up.
Notable people
- Robin Hood
- Major Hayman Rooke
- Walter Scott
- Maid Marian