Nottingham Castle and Robin Hood

Here are a couple of the photos I took at Nottingham Castle this week,
including one of the legendary Robin Hood. For anyone expecting to see
a medieval castle, the present castle will be a disappointment to him/her
… the old castle became a ruin during the 1500s, and was eventually
pulled down. The Duke of Newcastle put up the more modern one as shown
below, but this was burned down by an angry mob in the 1830s. Eventually
it was refurbished and became Nottingham’s Castle Museum and Art Gallery.

There’s loads more info on the Castle and Robin Hood on Wikipedia, so
I won’t re-iterate it all here. As some of you will know, there’s
always been some county/city rivalry as to where Robin Hood was based …
it may be that South Yorkshire was the main area where he lived … who
knows? Anyway, a lot of Nottingham’s tourist industry is built around
this folklore, so who am I to question people’s strongly held beliefs? :)

I mentioned some time ago, that way back in the 1970s, the local Robin
Hood Society staged an exhibition in the Castle’s gatehouse. I was
very interested to see one item on display … a grubby-looking vest,
said to have been worn by Robin Hood. When I had a closer look, I
spotted a label just inside it, on which was written: “Made in Hong Kong”.

How remarkable, I thought … what a huge distance this vest had travelled
… perhaps one of the crusaders had brought it back from the Middle East?

Nottingham Castle …



Robin Hood himself …



I’ve put more pics on my Flickr site … I went round the castle grounds
for an hour and a half, along with other members of a photography group
I’ve joined. There was an icy cold gale blowing (which nearly blew me
off my feet at one point), so we all enjoyed a hot drink in the café
inside, afterwards.

Here are a few articles on Wikipedia for anyone interested ....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nottingham_Castle
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robin_Hood
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_Civil_War