August 2011

Sherwood Forest Book, 1602

Reference: SO/FR/1

Sherwood Forest covered a large section of west Nottinghamshire, from the Trent in the south to the Meden in the north. Unlike our concept of forests today, Sherwood Forest was not a heavily wooded area. It included a mixture of sandy heathland, woods, cultivated land and settlements including Mansfield and Nottingham. A large number of people lived in the forest, including townspeople, manorial tenants and religious communities of monks and nuns. The forest was, in fact, an area of land which was governed by the forest law which protected the venison (the beasts of the chase, such as deer and wild boar) and the vert (the vegetation the animals lived on).

A team of officials was responsible for maintaining the forest law, including wardens, foresters and verderers. A number of courts were held in the forest at regular intervals in order to deal with trespass, taking of wood and poaching.

The forest officials and the courts produced a large number of records, including court rolls detailing the proceedings at court, statutes, ordinances and writs. One important document was the perambulation. This was a written document which described where the boundary of the forest lay. The forest officials would actually walk the boundary of the forest, physically marking the route with merepoints or waymarkers, and then write up the details. This process was important as it established which parts of the county were governed under forest law, and which under common law. The earliest surviving perambulation dates from 1218 and the last one was made in 1662.

One way of keeping all this documentation together was to write it up in a volume called a Forest Book. These books include copies of:

• Statutes and ordinances
• Perambulations of forest boundaries
• Inquisitions
• Extracts from the forest eyres (a type of forest court).

There are known to be fifteen surviving Forest Books, held in different archives and libraries around the country. Nottinghamshire Archives holds two of these, including the copy that was made at Rufford Abbey in the middle of the forest. In addition, a number of copies and fragments of Forest Books also survive. The book shown is a copy of the Rufford Abbey book. This copy was produced in 1602 and is now part of the Forest Records. The exhibited page shows a perambulation of the forest. The type of ink used by the copyist was not of good quality and it has since corroded the pages of the book, which have now been conserved.

On 30 July 2011 writer and artist Dave Wood began the Creative Perambulations Project, a re-visiting of the last perambulation of Sherwood Forest in 1662.

• Dave will follow the route of the perambulation in a series of walks over the next six months
• A series of creative events and activities will mark the route
• Why not join in? Find out more about the project at http://creativesherwoodforestperambulations.blogspot.com/2011/03/home.html
• As part of the project a talk exploring the mediaeval archives of Sherwood Forest will be held on 10 August at Nottinghamshire Archives. Find out more about the talk and how to book a place on our archives events page.

The Forest Records are one of a number of Semi-Official collections held at Nottinghamshire Archives. Find out more about them.

Do you have a comment or question about this image? Contact us for more information.

Please read our notice relating to copyright.

In order to view the documents linked from this page, you will need Adobe Acrobat reader (for pdf format). You can download this free of charge by going to plug-ins and viewers. Useful information on pdf files and their accessibility is available at: http://access.adobe.com.