Hero · Boarstall
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One knife, one monstrous boar, and a king's silver horn.
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The moated 14th-century gatehouse is National Trust; the NT says it is closed throughout the year except a fete afternoon in June, though the moat and exterior can be seen from the lane by the church. The horn and cartulary are kept at the Centre for Buckinghamshire Studies, rarely shown.
Near Boarstall: legend says a huntsman killed a monstrous boar here and a Saxon king paid him with a horn.
Bernwood Forest was a royal hunting ground, and Edward the Confessor kept a house at nearby Brill. Tradition says a savage wild boar terrorised the forest until a huntsman called Nigel killed it and presented its head to the King. In reward Edward gave him land and the keepership of the forest, held by a horn, and Nigel built a lodge he named Boarstall after the beast. A fifteenth-century cartulary of the Boarstall estate contains a drawing of Nigel kneeling with the boar's head while the King hands him the horn. The antiquary Hearne doubted the story, suggesting the name means something else entirely.