Merry Wakefield, Forrestation and Robin Hood

It is in the Wakefield Rolls we find the strongest candidate for the many Real Robin Hoods, Robert Hood lived in Wakefield with his wife Matilda at Bichill - now the site of Wakefield Bus Station.

Local Historians in the 1970's took the time to map historic land use in Wakefield, and these can be viewed at Wakefield Museum and Library.

Waca's Field was a settlement -  a clearing into the uncleared Forest of Barnsdale with the Great Marsh separating the small hamlet from Sandala. The area would have still been part of the British forest Kingdom of Elmet with Anglian settlement from the East with the Anglian Kingdom of Deira

After the defeat of Elmet at the hands of the Northumbrians - Deira and Bernicia, Viking invasion and settlement into Bys and Thorpes  let to further in roads into Barnsdale in Wakefield.

By the time of the Norman Invasion in 1066, we see depopulation caused by the Harrying of the North by King William I. 

By the Age of Robin Hood in 1300, the deforestation of Barnsdale which was an Anglo-Danish hunting forest used by Canute and the Confessor, the Normans protected Sherwood but not Barnsdale, which was a place of Anglo-Saxon Brigandage. 

The Woodland continues to diminish but still plays a role as can be seen in 1460 with the Battle of Wakefield.