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Edwinstowe

Edwinstowe in Sherwood Forest was named after Edwin the King of Northumbria which covered an area stretching from the River Trent to Edinburgh.

It is thought that the King died while fighting King Penda of Mercia duirng a battle a few miles from Edwinstowe in 633 AD.

His friends are said to have secretly buried King Edwin in a clearing in Sherwood Forest so that his enemies did not steal his body.

His friends returned later and built a small wooden church on his grave.

By this time people were calling him Saint Edwin and the village was named Edwinstowe - the holy place of Edwin.

A cross mounted on a pile of stones can be found in the forest and is believed to mark where the church once stood.

The village is popular with tourists because its present church dedicated to St Mary is said to be the place where the legendary outlaw Robin Hood married Maid Marian.

It is thought that a church was first built on the site of the present St Mary's in memory of King Edwin who was a Christian. The original building, probably made from wood, was not large enough for the village and so a stone building was begun in 1175.

That church may have been built under the orders of Henry II as one of his many acts of penance for the murder of Thomas-a-Becket in 1170.

The building was enlarged and improved in 1342 and in 1450. The walls were plastered in 1820 and the clock was put in the tower the following year.

Work to reroof underpin and floodlight the church has since been undertaken.

The oldest gravestones date back to 1703 and the most interesting ones are those of Henry James Perrener, a Bow Street Runner who died in 1841, and Dr Cobham Brewer of literary fame, who died in 1897.

Other places of interest include Edwinstowe Hall, which has been home to various noble families including the Earls of Scarborough.

The present hall, built in 1757, has been used by a company making bows and arrows and then as a children's home. The village's Wesleyan Chapel off High Street was built in 1848 and has since been used as a bakery.

The remains of the old village lock-up are opposite the Jug and Glass. The prisoners' chains are on the remaining wall of the lock-up. Edwinstowe's Mill Lane is so called because it once ran alongside a watermill.

Traces of the old mill dam can still be seen. The course of the River Maun, which runs past the village, was changed in the early 19th Century when a system of specially constructed dykes were linked to the river.

The dykes were used to flood the surrounding fields to produce earlier and more abundant crops.

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