Description:
Includes:- part of Robin Hood's chair, cap, gravestone.
The maze is the Clifton maze.
Now on this sheet are also engraved plans of the mazes at St. Anne's Hill, and at Clifton, near Nottingham. In a footnote. (p. IOI,) referring to the history of these pieces of antiquity, certain authorities are quoted, with their theories and opinions thereon, from which I make the following extract:- Aubrey (Surrey, v. 1'0.) informs us there were many of them in England before the Civil Wars; and that the young people used on festivals to dance, or, as the term was, to tread them; which it seems in Wales is done on the green turf of the banks. Besides this at Pimpern, he mentions, as remaining in his time, a very fair one at West Ashton in Wiltshire, and a third on Cotswold Hills, Gloucestershire. He supposes the Maze in Southwark was of this sort. Dr. Stukeley saw three in Lincolnshire, near Horncastle, at Appleby, and at Alkborough. That which Dr. Deering mentions near Nottingham is about one mile and a half north from the town on the downs, and known by the name of the Shepherd's Race'. It is eighteen yards square, having at the angles four oval projections facing the four cardinal points, the distance from the extremes of which is thirty-four yards. There is another maze of a square form, hut smaller, at Clifton, four miles from Nottingham. In comparing the above account with that of Dr. Trollope's in reference to the Nottingham Maze, I find the Bishop's to be the more correct and lucid of the two, although both are a little out in describing its diameter.
Extract taken from J P Briscoe ‘Old Nottinghamshire’
Near this well, which has been mentioned in section 1 and which is frequented by many Prefons as a cold Bath, and reckoned the 2d. coldeft in England, there flood anciently a Chappel dedicated to St. Anne, whence the Well obtained the Name it bears, tho' before this Chappel was built, it was known by the Name of Robin Hood's Well, by some called to this day. The People who keep the Green and Public Houfe to promote a Holy-day trade, shew an old wickered Chair, which they call Robin Hood's Chair, a Bow, and an old Cap, both these they affirm to have been this famous Robber's Property; (a) this little Artifice takes so well with the People in low-Life, that at Christmas, Easter and Whitsuntide, it procures them a great deal of Bufinefs, for at those Times great Numbers of young Men bring their Sweet-hearts to this Well, and give them a Treat, and the Girls think themselves ill-used, if they have not been faulted by their Lovers in Robin Hood's Chair.
Extract taken from C. Deering 'An Historical Account of the Ancient and Present State of the Town Of Nottingham' (1751)