Outlaw
Robin Hood's Arrows
Two stones, two arrows, one impossible shot across the Nene.
See it clearly
- What's there
- Two notched medieval standing stones by the road
- Legend from
- Medieval, told by 1600s
- Tone
- Light-hearted
Near Castor two stones stand by the roadside. Legend says they mark where Robin Hood and Little John's arrows came down, fired from a churchyard miles away.
Beside the road down Ferry Hill from Castor towards Milton Ferry stand two old upright stones, a few yards apart, their tops notched like arrow flights. Local people long called them Robin Hood and Little John. The story says the outlaw and his friend stood in Alwalton churchyard, across the Nene, and each shot an arrow; where the arrows landed the stones were raised. Camden already doubted this in the 1600s, saying the stones marked a toll-free route for Barnack stone carted to Gunwade Ferry for Bury St Edmunds, and called them St Edmund's stones. Historians now favour that explanation, but the archers' names stuck.