The origin of the legend is claimed by some to have stemmed from actual outlaws, or from tales of outlaws, such as Hereward the Wake, Eustace the Monk, Fulk FitzWarin and William Wallace.

Although Sweyn had promised to leave England, he returned in spring 1070, raiding along the Humber and East Anglia toward the Isle of Ely, where he joined up with Hereward the Wake, a local thegn.

Earl Edwin was betrayed by his own men and killed, while William built a causeway to subdue the Isle of Ely, where Hereward the Wake and Morcar were hiding.

* Hereward the Wake, English outlaw

* William I of England invades Scotland, and also receives the submission of Hereward the Wake.

* Hereward the Wake begins a Saxon revolt in the Fens of eastern England, which later collapses.

* Hereward the Wake ( year approximate )

On screen he has been portrayed by Eduard Franz in the film Lady Godiva of Coventry ( 1955 ), George Howe in the BBC TV drama series Hereward the Wake ( 1965 ), Donald Eccles in the two-part BBC TV play Conquest ( 1966 ; part of the series Theatre 625 ), Brian Blessed in Macbeth ( 1997 ), based on the Shakespeare play ( although he does not appear in the play itself ), and Adam Woodroffe in an episode of the British TV series Historyonics entitled " 1066 " ( 2004 ).

Abigail and Roger, The Airbase, As Good Cooks Go, the 1960 adaptation of The Citadel, the 1956 adaptation of David Copperfield, The Dark Island, The Gnomes of Dulwich, Hurricane, For Richer ... For Poorer, Hereward the Wake, The Naked Lady, Night Train To Surbiton, Outbreak of Murder, Where do I Sit ?, and Witch Hunt have all been wiped with no footage surviving while four out of seven episodes of the paranormal anthology series Dead of Night were wiped.

Hereward the Wake ( c. 1035 – 1072 ), known in his own times as Hereward the Outlaw or Hereward the Exile, was an 11th-century leader of local resistance to the Norman conquest of England.

In Kingsley's 1865 Hereward the Wake, the name of the knight who bribed the monks to gain access to the isle is given as Belasius, and the feature is noted in Lysons ' Magna Britannia ( 1808 vol2, pt1, Cambridgeshire ).

* BR standard class 7 ( otherwise known as the " Britannia Class ") locomotive No 70037 carried the name " Hereward the Wake ".

* Thomas Bulfinch wrote about Hereward the Wake in his work: The Age of Fable, or Stories of Gods and Heroes ( 1855 ).

* Charles Kingsley's novel Hereward the Wake: " last of the English " ( London: Macmillan, 1866 ) is a highly romanticised account of Hereward's exploits, and makes him the son of Earl Leofric of Mercia and the ancestor of the family of Wake.

* Cold Heart, Cruel Hand: a novel of Hereward the Wake ( 2004 ) is a novel by Laurence J.

* Hereward is portrayed as a prototype Robin Hood, but also a drug-taking, psychopathic arsonist, in Mike Ripley's novel The Legend of Hereward the Wake ( 2007 ).

* The BBC made a 16-episode TV series in 1965 entitled Hereward the Wake, based on Kingsley's novel: Hereward was portrayed by actor Alfred Lynch.

* Progressive rock band Pink Floyd referred to Hereward in the track " Let There Be More Light " ( 1968 ), in which a psychedelic vision at Mildenhall reveals the ' living soul of Hereward the Wake '.

It takes significant dramatic liberties, projecting that Hereward later took the alias ' Godwin of Ely ' and worked his way to the Head of Emperor Alexius's Byzantine forces ; before heading off on the First Crusade, to become a lead strategist of the Princes ' Crusade and advisor of Bohemond of Taranto.

Another psychical researcher Hereward Carrington in his book Story of Psychic Science ( 1930 ) wrote that the photographs taken by Crawford look " dubious in appearance " and that " with rare exceptions, no other investigators had an opportunity to check-up his results, since outsiders were rarely admitted to the sittings " however Carrington also stated that some type of genuine phenomena may have been observed by Crawford.

* No Ribbons or Medals: the story of " Hereward " an Australian counter espionage officer published by Jacobyte Books, South Australia, 2004 ISBN 1-74100-165-X available from Digital Print, South Australia.

Sweyn II of Denmark arrived in person to take command of his fleet and renounced the earlier agreement to withdraw, sending troops into the Fens to join forces with English rebels led by Hereward, who were based on the Isle of Ely.

Edwin and Morcar again turned against William, and while Edwin was soon betrayed and killed, Morcar reached Ely, where he and Hereward were joined by exiled rebels who had sailed from Scotland.

On the other hand, the original version of the Gesta was written in explicit praise of Hereward ,; much of its information was provided by men who knew him personally, principally, if the preface is to be believed, a former colleague in arms and member of his father's former household named Leofric the Deacon.

There is a wide variety of secondary sources of information, but they must be treated with caution: the popular, romanticised view of Hereward often has little basis in the medieval sources, owing more to the fictional depiction by Charles Kingsley and later authors.

According to the Gesta Herewardi, Hereward was exiled at the age of eighteen for disobedience to his father and disruptive behaviour, and he was declared an outlaw by Edward the Confessor.

They were joined by many, including Hereward.

This circular feature, known as Belsar's Hill, is a potential site for a fort, built by William, from which to attack Ely and Hereward.

The twelfth-century Gesta Herewardi ( of unknown authorship ; first published by Thomas Wright in 1839 and translated by W. Sweeting for the 1895 edition ), says Hereward was eventually pardoned by William and lived the rest of his life in relative peace.

Geoffrey Gaimar, in his Estoire des Engleis, says instead that Hereward lived for some time as an outlaw in the Fens, but that as he was on the verge of making peace with William, he was set upon and killed by a group of Norman knights.

Popular legend interprets it as meaning " the watchful ", and supposes that Hereward acquired it when, with the help of his servant Martin Lightfoot, he foiled an assassination attempt during a hunting party by a group of knights jealous of his popularity.

* Henry Treece's children's novel Man with a Sword was published by the Bodley Head, London, in 1962: Hereward is the hero of the story, in the first episode he is the champion of the Empress Gunhilda of Germany and at the end his life extends past the death of William I.

* Hereward by James Wilde ( 2011 ), a " brutal novel of revenge ", first in a projected trilogy, with the next two titles, The Devil's Army and End of Days to be published in the future.

The premise of this story is that Hereward was an alias adopted by King Harold after surviving the Battle of Hastings.

* Hancock's Half Hour-Sid James claims Hereward stayed at Hancock's house as a ploy to get the house renovated by the National Trust.

* Hereward is the subject of the track " Rebel of the Marshlands " by metal band Forefather, in their 2005 album Ours Is the Kingdom.

* Hereward, a historical novel by James Wilde, pub.

Some folk figures are based on semi or actual historical people whose story has been passed down centuries ; Lady Godiva for instance was said to have ridden naked on horseback through Coventry, the heroic English figure Hereward the Wake resisted the Norman invasion, Herne the Hunter is an equestrian ghost associated with Windsor Forest and Great Park, and Mother Shipton is the archetypal witch.

In the same year that Twenty's railway station opened ( 1866 ), the novelist Charles Kingsley published his romance Hereward, the Last of the English, in which he describes the Fens as he thought they had been in around 1070.

Peter Rex, in his 2005 biography of Hereward, points out that the campaigns he is reported to have fought in the neighbourhood of Flanders seem to have begun around 1063, and suggests that Hereward in fact went to Flanders-meaning that, if he was 18 at the time of his exile, he was born in 1044 / 5.

The Hereward Way ends at nearby Harling Road railway station / East Harling, linked to Knettishall Heath by path.

With the tagline of the station you can really call your own, Hereward Radio began on 95. 7 MHz and 225 metres / 1332kHz.