The Sayles 2

The view near the bridge over the river Went that carried all the A1 traffic prior to the construction of the viaduct in the 1960s, which carries the trunk road. The viaduct can be seen in the background to the east, and Sayles Plantation lies beyond the southern end, to the right (obscured by trees).

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Sayles Plantation, in the area know as Brockadale, lies approximately half a mile south east of Wentbridge. ‘From Sayles Plantation it was still possible, prior to the construction of the modern viaduct over the valley of Went, to observe all traffic crossing Wentbridge, and from Sayles it was easy to intercept south-bound travellers in the high rolling country which they had to cross once they had ascended the winding road up the valley-side of the Went. For Robin and his men the setting was ideal, and this is registered in the legend: all the travellers whom he intercepts are travelling south. Modern traffic and the viaduct apart, the scene is still almost as it is described in the Gest and as it survives in the medieval place names’. (Holt, Robin Hood, pp. 83-84) ‘The high ground of Sayles, 120 feet above the surrounding plain, commands an extensive view, even to Market Weighton in the East Riding: see ‘Dodsworth Yorkshire Notes’, ed. R. Holmes (Y.A.J., XII, 1893), p. 65′. (Dobson and Taylor, Rymes of Robyn Hood, p. 22, n. 4).

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