Survey of English Place-Names

Etymology

Robin Hood and Little John are the names of two stones in Castor Field near Gunwade Ferry, now covered with thorn- bushes. Morton (551) writes as follows: “Erroneous tradition has given them out to be Two Draughts of Arrows from Alwalton Church-Yard thither, the one of Robin Hood , and the other of Little John . But the Truth is they were set up for Witnesses, that the carriages of Stone from Bernack to Gunwade -Ferry , to be conveyed to St Edmund 's -Bury , might pass that way without paying Toll. And in some old Terriars , they are called St Edmund 's Stones. These Stones are nicked in their Tops after the manner of Arrows, probably enough in Memory of St Edmund, who was shot to Death with Arrows by the Danes . The Balk they stand upon is still call'd St Edmund 's Balk. They are supposed to be the petrify 'd Arrows of those Two Famous Archers.”Morton's history of these stones, based in part on Gunton's History of Peterborough , has good early authority. Mr Mellows calls our attention to a passage in Henry of Pytchley's Book of Fees (100) and a charter surviving in a copy of the lost original in the Registers of the Precentor which make this clear. There we have recorded grants by the abbot of Peterborough to the abbot of Bury of a rood of land in the field of Castor, with free carriage on the public road from Barnack through that land down to the Nene and across the Nene between Peterborough and Alwalton, for the conveyance of marble and other stone for the use of the monks of Bury.