Picture: Rear view of the Gate House at Kirklees where Robin Hood is said to have been bled to death by the Prioress. (Courtesy of Steven Hill)

Robin Hood's grave was first noted by John Leland c.1506-52 who was Henry VIII antiquary. He travelled widely in England and Wales keeping records of all kinds of antiquities and he recorded the grave at Kirklees as ‘monasterum monialum ubi Ro:Hood nobilis ille exlex sepultus.’ Which roughly translated means, "Resting under this monument lies buried Robin Hood that nobleman who was beyond the law."

Two hundred years after Leland in the mid-eighteenth century the Reverend Joseph Ismay, speaks of "Ye sepulchral Monument of Robin Hood near Kirklees which has been lately impaled (enclosed) in ye form of a Standing Hearse in order to preserve the stone (the slab) from the rude hands of the curious traveller who frequently carried off a small fragment of ye stone, and thereby diminished it's pristine Beauty" (The original slab is almost completely gone, all that remains is what you can see in the centre with another stone place on top)

Slightly later in 1773 Sir George Armytage II placed a headstone with a date 1247 which he obtained from a record kept by Thomas Gale who was the Dean of York and he recorded the epitaph of Robin Hood's Grave as:
Hear undernead dis laitl stean laiz robert earl of Huntingtun near arcir ber az hei sa geud an pipl kauld im robin heud sick utlawz az hi an iz men vil england nibr si agen obiit 24 kal dekembris 1247. 

When translated into modern English it reads:
“Robert Earl of Huntingdon lies under this little stone. No archer was like him so good; his wildness named him ROBIN HOOD. For thirteen years, and something more, these northern parts he vexed sore. Such outlaws as he and his men, may England never know again. 8th November 1247."

The small Cistercian priory of Kirklees was founded in 1155 and at the Dissolution the site of the priory was granted in 1544 to John Tasburgh and Nicholas Savile. In 1565 Robert Pilkington and his wife, Alice Savile, conveyed the manor of Kirklees to John Armytage, the family maintaining possession until the twentieth century. As the custodians of the Priory site and the reputed grave of Robin Hood, the Armytage family of Kirklees Hall may have played important role in the furtherance of the Robin Hood legend.

John Armytage became the Sheriff of Yorkshire in 1641AD and he married Margery Beaumont while an earlier member of the Beaumont family, Isabel, daughter of Robert II de Beaumont and Amice of Gael & Montfort married Simon de Senlis of Huntingdon (1121-1153) who was descended from Waltheof the Earl of Huntingdon and was the Lord of the Manor of Hallam (Sheffield). Shortly after, Ermengarde-de-Beaumont born c.1165 married William the Lion of Scotland. He was the son of Henry 2nd earl of Huntingdon and brother of David 3rd earl of Huntingdon. David married Matilda-de-Kevilioc who was the sister of Ranulf Earl of Chester.

The attachment of the grave to the Robin Hood legend may be due to several factors, one of which would be Roger Dodsworth's note stating that Robin of Loxley fled to the Calder Valley where Kirklees Priory is located. Combine that information with the Armytage family links to the Earls of Huntingdon and include for good measure the ballads of Robin Hood's death at the Priory and we may well be on the way to finding the explanation for Robin Hood's memorial grave at Kirklees and the headstone that was put into place in 1733AD.

According to the Geste Robin Hood's last wish was:
"Lay me a green sod under my head another at my feet, my best bow beside me place, for truly t’was my music sweet, and make my grave of gravel and green which is most right and meet, give me length and breadth to lie so they will say when I am dead, HERE LIES BOLD ROBIN HOOD MY FRIEND HERE LIES BOLD ROBIN HOOD." These words they readily granted him, which did bold Robin please, and there they buried bold Robin Hood, near to the fair Kirkleys.

The pictures are of Robin Hood's Grave and the Gatehouse where Robin Hood was supposedly bled to death by the wicked prioress and is said to be from where he shot his last arrow, the bottom right-hand photograph is the “Heartshead Stone” which is in the Heartshead church cemetery near to the Kirklees Priory where the Armytage family members and their servants are buried. The stone has been dated by Bradford University and is said to be 13th century. It is thought by some to be significant and perhaps the real Robin Hood’s grave.