athousanderrors

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itinerantvae:

I see there’s another Robin Hood movie coming out soon, so if anyone only knows about Nottingham from Robin Hood movies, here are some things you might not know.

Nottingham Castle is on top of a sandstone cliff. Yes, on one side you can access it from the city, but on the other side, cliff. There are caves and tunnels running through the cliff. You probably couldn’t get over the walls with a ladder (looking at you Robin of Sherwood) or ping yourself over them on a catapult (this one’s on you, Prince of Thieves), but if you knew the caves and tunnels, you could find a way in. You’d probably encounter guards pretty soon after, because most inhabitants of the castle also knew about the tunnels and caves.

Nottingham still has a castle, yes! But it is not the one from the time of the Robin Hood ballads. See, in the 17th century, England had a Civil War, which was not very civil but was pretty war-y, and Nottingham picked the Royalist side. Cromwell wasn’t very happy about that, so once he and his troops had conquered Nottingham’s defenses, he ordered the castle to be “slighted”. Sounds pretty mild? Nope, it means “bomb the fuck out of the bastard 11th century castle so no one can use it as defense against us ever again”. Don’t be one of those tourists who stands outside the castle grounds gates and asks locals where the castle is. We know it doesn’t look like the one in the movies.

Nottingham gets called a “City of Caves”. Guess why? There are a fuckload of caves under the city. At various points in Nottingham’s history, people have lived in the caves, worked in the caves, had tanneries and workshops in the caves, used the caves for storage, and also used the caves as bomb shelters. (Admittedly probably not during the time that the Robin Hood legends are set, unless the sheriff had bomber planes I never heard about.) Because Nottingham’s built on sandstone, the caves tend to be warm and dry instead of cold and damp. You can visit some of them - the entrance is through a shop in a shopping mall. There’s also an ongoing cave exploration project because we still haven’t actually mapped all the caves in Nottingham, or even found them all. In a lovely case of nominative determinism, the project is led by Dr Strange-Walker. 

In the 12th century (I’m going with 12th century for Robin Hood setting because of Richard the Lionheart and the third crusade etc etc), Nottingham was not a new city. It got mentioned in the Anglo Saxon Chronicle (that’s 9th century, tick it off on your bingo cards) as a significant settlement. By the time the Domesday Book was recorded, it went by the name of Snotingham, so I think we can all agree it was a good thing that they updated the name of the city not long after that. (Sorry, Snotingas, you’re not that revelant to Robin Hood, even if you probably were pretty royal as far as things went in the 9th century.) So by the time Robin and the Sheriff rock up, Nottingham’s pretty established as an important city with a court and a big marketplace and a castle up on top of Castle Rock. (Did I mention the 130ft cliff? I think it’s worth mentioning again because no filmmakers ever seem to have heard of it.)

Nottingham’s built next to a river. Cricket fans will have heard of Trent Bridge, and the Trent is the river that goes through Nottingham. Water for industry, water for washing, water for making beer (very important, you can’t just drink the water, it’s full of nasty stuff that will kill you in painful ways, yes that does include now). The river runs pretty close to the bottom of Castle Rock, which is probably why BrewHouse Yard is at the bottom of the cliff, next to the river. (It wasn’t called BrewHouse Yard until the 17th century, though, it just was a brew house in the 11th century onwards. It’s in caves.) Want your outlaws to have a quick getaway from the castle? Send them through the tunnels and caves and then give them a boat. Go down the river, though, not across it - the first bridge over the Trent was probably built in the 10th century so soldiers could ride across that faster than getting into a boat, getting the thing out of the rushes, rowing across the current, getting into the rushes on the other side and then getting out onto the bank to say hello to the not so nice soldiers.

You might have guessed it from the mention of beer and breweries, but Nottingham has pubs. Nottingham, in fact, has some of the oldest surviving pubs in Britain. Ye Olde Trip To Jerusalem was probably built in the first half of the 12th century, and the room downstairs is literally a cave, but it’s a cave with a bar. If you’re touristing, go for the storytelling and folk music. If you’re local, you’ve probably never been there. Anyway, your merrie band of outlaws could absolutely have had a few pints in the Trip, as long as they weren’t worried about castle guards drinking in there too. Unless the whole story about the Trip is a big tourist trap (look, proof is hard to find and so are customers with that much competition for the tourists) and the caves were, in fact, still the castle breweries in the 12th century.

In conclusion, Hadrian’s Wall is not on the way between Dover and Nottingham and it runs east-west (so pointing off it at right angles is very unlikely to be east Kevin Costner) and Nottingham as a city has many plot-useful geographic features. Since filmmakers are apparently determined to ignore them, why not make use of them in your fanfic or published Robin Hood retelling? Anyone who actually knows the geography of Nottingham will thank you.

This post is brought to you by the gales of laughter in the Savoy Cinema on Derby Road when Prince Of Thieves was on cinema release and they put up a still of a building that claimed to be “Nottingham Castle”.
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