![]() ![]() The new name, though, was not popular among those living near the spring who, as Dr Charles Deering found when he visited it in the 18th century, insisted on calling it by its previous name. Another document, this time dated 1596, clears up any possibility of there having been both a Robin Hood’s Well and a St Ann’s Well by alluding to ‘Robynhode Well alias Saynt Anne Well’. There is no dispute about St Ann’s Well having been called after Robin Hood in the 14th century, for it is so styled in a legal document dated 20 July, 1500. The only record of this being the site of the ancient healing spring is a tiny plaque high up on the pub’s wall, though this carries no reference on it to Robin Hood. However, a proposal to restore it as the focal point of a St Ann’s heritage centre came to nought when the City Council refused financial assistance for the scheme. ![]() An exploratory excavation carried out in 1987 at the rear of the new public house relocated the spring, which was found to still flow. Some years ago the railway itself became a victim of a programme of railway closures, but while the tracks have now been removed the embankment remains with a public house, The Gardeners, once more occupying the approximate site of the inn demolished in 1855. Unfortunately the garden became a dumping ground for rubbish and in 1887 it was sold to a company who demolished the monument and buried the spring site under an embankment intended to carry a railway track. The spring water, though, had never been consumed for its healing properties, but bathed in, so the tap was a meaningless gesture. Initially access to the spring water was not possible, but later it was piped to a tap from which samples could be collected. This took the form of a mini-tower set centrally in a small garden, the whole being enclosed by a decorative iron fence. However, the fame and antiquity of the spring itself was recognised, the town council voting a sum of £100 to erect a monument over it. The spring continued to attract sick people from the Nottingham area and beyond until the early years of the 19th century but then it went into a rapid period of decline which ended with its closure in 1855 and the demolition of the inn and other buildings on the site. Eventually St Ann’s developed into a healing-cum-entertainment complex which I have described elsewhere as a ‘mini Vauxhall Gardens’. However, as the spring continued to attract large numbers of sick people because of its considerable reputation for curing rheumatic complaints, it is not surprising to find that the occupants of the house started to cater for the stream of visitors. Following the suppression of the priory the well site came into the possession of what passed for a town council in Nottingham (it may have been their property prior to seizure as the town owned woodland in the area) and a house was built there with stone taken from the now-disused chapel for a woodward, this individual having charge of the town’s forest land in the area. Some time during the early years of the 15th century the Nottinghamshire spring site was ‘seized’ by an unrecorded monastic order which I believe to have been the Cluniacs of Lenton Priory, Nottingham who built a chapel next to the spring which they dedicated to St Ann, following which the spring itself became known as St Ann’s Well. The Yorkshire spring is near Skelbrooke and was in a similar setting, in Barnsdale Forest. It is not my intention to become involved in this debate but to confine myself to a question which may have, indeed has, some implications in respect of the historical debate, namely, which of two springs, one in Nottinghamshire, the other in South Yorkshire, has been called after the outlaw longest?Īlthough now within the bounds of Nottingham, the site of the Nottinghamshire spring (I use the terms spring and well synonymously) was, when first recorded as bearing Robin Hood’s name in the 15th century, in Sherwood Forest, being about two miles north-east of the town (Nottingham did not become a city until 1897), at the side of a well-used route to the north. The stories of Robin Hood originated in the medieval period, though whether he was historical, a quasi-religious entity or a composite character are issues about which scholars have long argued and will, no doubt, continue to do so. ![]()
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