This account has led to speculation over the years as to where the remains of England’s most famous outlaw may be. There is indeed a monument in the Priory grounds, but it lies around 650 yards away from the gatehouse. It is inconceivable, given the type of bow available to Robin, together with the fact that he was very old and in failing health at the time, that the arrow could have travelled so far. This was conclusively demonstrated during a series of rigorous tests in 2003 carried out by history writer Richard Rutherford-Moore.

As long as there is a physical marker of the spot, however much of a fairytale it may seem, it will prove impossible to quell interest in it. Some academic studies have questioned whether Robin Hood himself ever existed, but if he did – and Rutherford-Moore is one who doesn’t doubt the factual basis of the legends – it isn’t very likely that the stone on the Kirklees estate marks the precise location of Robin’s mortal remains.

Private monument

The grave was at some stage enclosed within a low stone wall, to which iron railings were added in the 19th century, to deter the curious. The land on which it stands is privately owned, and the monument is not open to public view. We know from written records and a surviving 17th-century sketch by one Nathaniel Johnston that there was once a complete horizontal stone slab, with a cross engraved on it.

By 1786, this too was reported by antiquarian Richard Gough as being “broken and much defaced”. This was as a result of bits of it being chiselled away over the years by local people, who believed that it had the power to cure toothache (compare this to local belief in the curative powers of the stones at Stonehenge). Notwithstanding the damage, the cross and the first part of the inscription could still be made out at this time: “Here lie Robard Hude, Willm Gold burgh, Thoms…”

Set into the rear inside wall of the enclosure is a further tablet, on which a curious-looking, apparently medieval English inscription can still be made out:

Hear underneath dis laitl stean
Laz robert earl of Huntingtun
Ne’er arcir ver as hie sa geud
An pipl kauld im robin heud
Sick utlawz as he an iz men
Vil england nivr si agen
Obiit 24 kal: Dekembris. 1247.

This translates as:

Here underneath this little stone
Lies Robert, earl of Huntington.
Never was there archer as he so good
And people called him Robin Hood.
Such outlaws as he and his men
Will England never see again.
Died 24th kalendris, December 1247.

This is, in fact, a copy of an earlier epitaph stone that manages to get the agreed date of Robin’s death (normally thought to be 1347) a century out. It was probably erected in the 18th century by the then proprietor of the estate, Sir George Armytage, with the words being taken from an account of the original epitaph found in the papers of Thomas Gale, Dean of York, some 75 years earlier. (It was probably Gale who was responsible for getting the date of death wrong by misreading of the original stone.) The Armytage family is still in possession of the site, including the ruins of the Kirklees Priory gatehouse.

Another of the ancestors, Samuel Armytage, went looking for the bones of Robin Hood in 1607. He had the grave excavated but found nothing beneath it, although, as he only dug down to a depth of about three feet, the lack of any discovery doesn’t prove anything either way. The mystery remains, while the location of the grave itself, deep in tangled woodland on a private estate, does nothing to encourage further investigation.