Outlaw
Snooks, the Last Highwayman
Run round his grave three times calling 'Snooks', and he will rise.
See it clearly
- What's there
- His grave stone, fenced, on open moorland
- Legend from
- 1802
- Tone
- Dark history
Out on Boxmoor, just ahead, lies the grave of the last highwayman hanged in England, and they say if you run round it three times calling his name, he'll rise.
On an open stretch of Boxmoor a memorial marks the grave of Robert Snooks, the last man in England executed for highway robbery. In May 1801 he held up a post boy riding from Tring to Hemel Hempstead and made off with the mail bags, but a saddle with a broken girth, abandoned on the moor, betrayed him. He was hanged on the moor where the crime took place in March 1802 and buried on the spot in unconsecrated ground. Local belief held that if anyone ran around his grave three times calling 'Snooks' three times, he would rise. The grave is said to have been marked with puddingstones.