Photographs by Gary Tacagni.

I had come across references to Steetly Chapel in a book that I had borrowed from Leek library and also the connections it is said to have with Robin Hood and Friar Tuck. I knew that it would not be an easy task in trying to find the chapel as Steetly does’nt show up on a road map, however I did find the oddly named Rhodesia which seemed to be the closest village to Steetly on the outskirts of Worksop.

On Wendnesday 27th of July 2011 I decided to see if I could find the chapel, and as I intended on looking at a Harley Davidson for sale in Sheffield which is only about half an hour away from Worksop I decided to combine the two. I followed the A6 from Buxton and then picked up the A619 which would take me all the way to Worksop, I knew that when I passed over the M1 there is a seven mile stretch of road before you come into Worksop and it is somewhere along this stretch where you need to turn off, however there are no sign posts to Rhodesia or Steetly and I ended up on the outskirts of Worksop where I had to ask for directions, they sent me back the way I’d come about a mile and I took a small road which was Steetly lane I followed this and eventually came into Rhodesia, I then backtracked the way I had come and found the chapel surrounded by trees close to the begining of Steetly lane. I was not sure what I would find, whether the chapel was derelict (as I had seen in drawings of it), but I was pleasantly suprised to find that it was in very good condition and had obviously been renovated at some time in the past.

Steetly Chapel is one of the few buildings which date back to Norman times in the Sherwood area and so there could be some truth to the legend that Friar Tuck and Robin Hood along with his Merry men used this chapel for prayer all those years ago. As a wanted outlaw Robin would have been aware that he could become trapped in this chapel, and it is said that a false ceiling would have allowed him and his followers to evade capture.