Barnsdale

Barnsdale, or Barnsdale Forest, is an area of South Yorkshire, England. The area falls within the Whitley Ward of the Wakefield Metropolitan Council. Barnsdale is historically part of the West Riding of Yorkshire. Barnsdale lies in the immediate vicinity north and north-west of Doncaster, and which was formerly forested and a place of royal hunts, and also renowned as a haunt of the outlaw Robin Hood in early ballads.Boundaries and features of BarnsdaleBarnsdale historically falls within the West Riding of the County of York commonly known as the West Riding of Yorkshire.The southern villages within Barnsdale are today part of the ceremonial county of South Yorkshire, more specifically part of the Metropolitan Borough of Doncaster, but the villages and hamlets of northern Barnsdale fall within the Metropolitan District of the City of Wakefield in the ceremonial county of West Yorkshire.The small South Yorkshire village of Hampole is generally considered to lie within the dead centre of what was once the Barnsdale Forest area. It is recorded that Richard Rolle (1300–1349), the famous Latin and English religious writer and Bible translator, spent his final years at Hampole as a hermit, secluded in the dense forest.