Robin Hood’s ‘grave’ could be concreted over for warehouses

A DYING Robin Hood is said to have fired his final arrow out into the meadows before being buried, at his request, at the very spot where it landed.

But the legendary outlaw’s idyllic resting place could be swallowed by concrete after being earmarked as the site for a sprawling industrial estate.

Folklore says that Robin Hood died at Kirklees Priory, West Yorkshire, where he fled after leaving the safety of Sherwood Forest to be healed by nuns under the care of the Prioress, Elizabeth de Staynton.

Now, Kirklees council has drawn up plans to build on the land, angering local experts and historians. The grass and trees where Robin’s arrow landed could disappear under “a sea” of huge steel warehouses, they warned.

Robert Bamforth, from the Campaign to Protect Rural England, said bureaucrats were sacrificing the area’s tourism potential.

“Everyone locally believes that is where Robin Hood died and no one has ever challenged that legend – not even Nottingham,” he said.

“The tragedy is this land has not been disturbed for hundreds of years and looks just as it did centuries ago so who knows what has been preserved.

“If you have a tourist and you say to them ‘Robin Hood died here and he shot his arrow over that warehouse’ it doesn’t quite have the same ring to it.”

Max Rathwell, chairman of Spen Valley Civic Society, said: “The whole plan is tragic and stunningly stupid. People are enraged. The idea is bonkers. We know how well preserved the land is because it is still exactly as Charlotte Brontë described it in Shirley.

“It is a treasure island in an industrial landscape and Robin Hood’s grave would be a focal point.

“If this crazy idea goes ahead it will devastate the area. Instead of woodland and meadows and fields of wheat and barley it will just be a sea of monstrous sheds.”

Barbara Green, 72, who founded the Yorkshire Robin Hood Society, said: “It really annoys me that the council has never shown the slightest interest in Robin’s grave.

“The society has tried since the Eighties to get the folly restored and open to the public and every effort has failed.

A public inquiry is under way into the Kirklees Council Local Plan. The authority declined to comment.