SHERWOOD FOREST, a quondam forest in Notts, Derbyshire, and Yorkshire; from Nottingham northward to Worksop, and thence less strictly to Whitby. It is commonly computed to have extended only to Worksop; but it really extended as truly to the neighbourhood of Doncaster; and reached thence in a less proper sense to Whitby. It was the haunt of the fabulous dragon of Wantley, the retreat of Robin Hood and his followers, and the scene of many sanguinary battles in the wars of the Roses; and it continued, so late as the time of Elizabeth, to occupy as large a space as the present New Forest in Hants. Considerable remains of it still exist near Mansfield, around Rotherham, and at the parks of Wentworth and Wharncliffe. See Nottingham.

(John Marius Wilson, Imperial Gazetteer of England and Wales (1870-72))