This is the true story of what must surely be one of the most extraordinary historical investigations ever conducted. It occurred while the British historian Graham Phillips and the musician Graham Russell and his artist wife Jodi were conducting background research for the stage musical and concept album The Heart of the Rose. It is not only a fascinating historical detective story into the truth behind the legend of Robin Hood, it’s also an account of the remarkable circumstances surrounding the investigations carried out by its writers. It not only involves the search for hidden treasure and a strange chain of what can only be described as paranormal events, it is also the true story of astonishing synchronicity. This is the word that the great psychologist Carl Jung used to describe seemingly random occurrences that appear to have meaning. Perhaps it was all an incredible series of coincidences. Or perhaps - as strange as it might sound - the hand of fate actually played a part in writing The Heart of the Rose. Did something beside the authors also want the true story of Robin Hood to be told? We present the events as they happened. It is for the reader to decide.

Air Supply has remained one of the world’s top bands for the last three decades. With many Top Ten singles and platinum albums to his credit, band member, singer/songwriter Graham Russell decided to compose a stage musical based around the story of Robin Hood. Although now living in the USA, Graham was born in the English city of Nottingham and had always been fascinated by the Robin Hood legend. Accordingly, he wanted to make the story line as authentic as possible, and so contacted one of Britain’s leading authorities on the subject - author and historian Graham Phillips. Phillips’ book, Robin Hood: The Man Behind the Myth, made international headlines by proposing that Robin Hood had in fact been an historical figure. Although many of the tales concerning Robin’s exploits may have been exaggerated, Phillips discovered medieval records revealing that the legend was based to a remarkable degree upon real, historical events.

After Graham Russell and his American wife Jodi traveled to England and met with Graham Phillips, all three became close friends and eventually decided to work on the show together. The problem was that although they had a firm historical basis for the story, many crucial elements concerning the Robin Hood legend remained a mystery. Over time, many pages from the earliest account of Robin’s life - the Little Story - were damaged or they are now missing entirely. Consequently, there were many unanswered questions. For instance, who was the enigmatic prioress Elizabeth de Staynton, and why had this woman of the Church apparently murdered the outlaw and then killed herself? What became of Marian and, most intriguing off all, where did Robin spend the mysterious twenty-two years between his disappearance from record in 1325 and his death at Kirklees in 1347? As such episodes would be essential for the show, the Russell’s and Graham Phillips decided to spend the summer traveling England in search of new historical clues. They never imagined how extraordinary the search itself would turn out to be.

The first discovery that this further research uncovered was new evidence that many Saxons who had been oppressed by their Norman overlords since the Battle of Hastings when the French Normans invaded Saxon England in 1066. Many of the Saxons in remote country districts had remained faithful to their old pre-Christian religion and still venerated the chief pagan deities - the forest god Herne, the hunter god Laan and the nature goddess Eostre. The rebellion had, they learned, also been a reaction against the intolerant English Church that increasingly persecuted this ancient religion. In the Earl of Lancaster’s own counties the old religion had been allowed to continue alongside the established Church and both faiths peacefully coexisted. After Lancaster’s death, however, Henry de Facombery prohibited the old religion and the outlaws were declared heretics.

Phillips and the Russells discovered a previously overlooked sixteenth-century manuscript in the vaults of the William Salt Library in Stafford that threw fascinating new light on the role Robin and Marian were thought to play in this old religion. Its author was the Elizabethan historian Robert Vernon who had made a study of the Robin Hood legend shortly after Anthony Munday’s play was first performed in 1598. From documents that still existed during his time, Vernon discovered that the Sherwood outlaws came to regard Robin and Marian as personifications of the old goddess and god Eostre and Laan. According to Vernon, after the historical Robin and Marian died the legend arose that they would one-day return. Moreover, the old religion survived and was still practiced in secret at the chief shrine to the god Herne – a sacred holly tree that stood in an ancient stone circle deep in the forests of central England. Said to be guarded by two spectral wolves, the shrine was known as the Heart of the Rose.

In his writings Robert Vernon had referred to a similar legend concerning Robin and Marian. It told how Robin had been mortally wounded in battle and how Maid Marian had taken him to the Heart of the Rose to treat his wounds. Here, the god Herne appeared and gave her the healing power to revive him. According to the folk tale, once he had recovered, Robin gained the power of the hunter god Laan and was able to unite the outlaws to oppose the tyranny of the Sheriff of Nottingham. This, it seems, is the essence of the Abbots Bromley pageant that is recorded as taking place as long ago as the Middle Ages. Accordingly, it not only appears that the Abbots Bromley pageant is the last surviving remnant of the old Saxon religion, it also preserves the tradition concerning Robin and Marian as the personifications of Eostre and Laan.

The Russells and Phillips now had the answer to a previously unsolved enigma. Why the legend of Robin Hood had survived for so long before it was popularised by Anthony Munday’s play. Robin and Marian, it seems, were once regarded as celestial figures in dissident Saxon mythology. In addition to being a popular hero, Robin Hood was once thought to be semi-divine.

Intrigued by these new discoveries, Phillips and the Russells decided to try to re-discover the long forgotten location of the Heart of the Rose. Although historical records still existed concerning its importance as a Saxon shrine in pre-Christian times, no specific reference to its location survived. The name Heart of the Rose appeared to have been the medieval name for the shrine, previously referred to in Latin writings as Litha Duodecima, the ‘Twelve Stones’. All they knew is that it was thought to be somewhere in the centre of England. This was evidently what the medieval name implied – the rose being the emblem of England. Also, the Robin Hood legends suggested that it was somewhere in Sherwood Forest.

The exact heart of England is said to be the village of Meriden in Warwickshire, where a monument still marks the spot. Accordingly, it was in nearby woodland that they decided to concentrate their search. If the Heart of the Rose had really existed, it seemed unlikely that anything of the stone circle would still survive. it was possible that provincial folklore might provide clues to its location. There was, in fact, only one area of the woodland that had any association with Robin Hood. It was a stretch of dense pine forest called Braden Wood, where legend told of an encounter between Robin and a giant stag. Although purely folklore, the story may have originated with a genuine tradition concerning the historical Robin and his association with a local shrine where the god Herne had been venerated. The stag was considered sacred to Herne and he was often depicted with a stag’s head.

On a hot, sunny afternoon in midsummer, Phillips and the Russells visited Braden Wood. It was here that the extraordinary series of events first began. The three of them were following a dirt track deeper into the forest when suddenly the sound of howling filled the air. They froze and looked at each other in surprise. It sounded exactly like the baying of a wolf. In the wilds of the USA such a sound might be common, but here in central England it seemed impossible. There had been no wild wolves in the British Isles for centuries. As they stood there listening, the chilling sound came again, this time as if two wolves were howling in unison. Plucking up courage, they followed the sound to a solitary cottage standing alone beside the track. Looking around, they saw that there were indeed two live wolves inside a fenced-off enclosure in the cottage garden. It turned out that the man who owned the cottage kept the animals as pets, having saved them from being put down when a nearby zoo had been forced to close. It seemed a strange coincidence that they were searching for a place that was said in legend to be guarded by two wolves and here they had found two real-life wolves.

The three of them joked between themselves that this might be fate’s way of telling them they were close to the place they sought. Although, at the time, they saw no logical reason to take such a notion seriously, the three of them considered that there was nothing to lose by searching the area of woodland behind the cottage. Before long, they found themselves in a small forest clearing in the middle of which stood a large, single holly tree about thirty feet tall. When Graham Phillips reminded them that the holly tree was once considered sacred to the god Herne and that one was said to stand at the Heart of the Rose, Graham Russell pointed out something that was really weird. The tree was covered in bright red berries. Holly berries, he said, did not ripen until the wintertime - in fact, midwinter which is why they are traditionally associated with Christmas. Here, however, they had ripened at the height of summer. Obviously, the tree could not be one that had stood there seven hundred years ago but it was certainly odd. The wolves and now the bizarrely ripened holly tree!

The Heart of the Rose was said to have been an ancient stone circle. Rings of standing stones, called megaliths, are found all over Britain. Some are remarkably well preserved, such as one of the largest and most famous, Stonehenge. Although most were much smaller and less elaborate than Stonehenge, these ancient monuments were all erected over 3000 years ago as places of worship. Centuries later, the Anglo-Saxons adopted some of them as temples to their own gods, and the Heart of the Rose was said to have been the most important.

There were no standing stones to be seen around the holly tree. However, if there had been a stone circle here, its megaliths may have fallen many centuries ago. They decided to clear away the ferns and bracken that covered the ground. Almost at once, they found three large, half buried, moss-covered stones. Each about four feet long, they were rectangular in shape and had clearly been shaped by man. In every respect, they were exactly like the fallen megaliths from an ancient stone circle. Nothing was marked on the map, but archaeologist are continually discovering the remains of previously unknown stone circles when fallen megaliths are uncovered from the earth or found beneath undergrowth by accident. The three of them could see no other reason why such stones would be there in the middle of the forest. it did seem as though they had found the remains of a forgotten stone circle.

Had they found the Heart of the Rose? It was certainly a reasonable possibility. The location stood in what had once been part of Sherwood Forest; it was close to the centre of England; and it was the only woodland for miles around which was connected with a Robin Hood legend – specifically, one that associated the outlaw with a stag: Herne’s sacred animal. Although megalithic stone circles were common in some part of the country, very few are known in central England. That they had found the remains of what looked like one in this particular location made it all the more likely that it was the site they were searching for. What was really odd is that they would never have found the stones had it not been for the wolves and then the peculiar holly tree. Despite what common sense dictated, they could not help but realize that they had been led to the Heart of the Rose.

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