Essex.
On Christmas day at Hornchurch the lessee of the tithes, which belong to New College, Oxford, supplies, says Hone, (Every Day Book, 1827, vol. ii. p. 1649), a boar’s head dressed and garnished with bayleaves, &c. In the afternoon it is carried in procession into the mill-field adjoining the churchyard, where it is wrestled for and afterwards feasted upon at one of the public-houses by the rustic conqueror and his friends with all the merriment peculiar to the season.
The following appeared in the Daily News of January 5th, 1852:—By ancient charter or usage in Hornchurch a boar’s head is wrestled for in a field adjoining the church, a boar, the property of the parish, having been slaughtered for the purpose. The boar’s head, elevated on a pole and decorated with ribbons, was brought into the ring where the competitors entered, and the prize was awarded.—See Morant, History of Essex, 1768, vol. i. p. 74.