Why Bradford’s Coat of Arms features the only Boars Head in Heraldry without a tongue.
Legend goes that during Saxon or Norman times when Bradford (or Broad Ford) was still a small village and when Sherwood Forest stretched right from one side of England to the other even as far as Robin Hood’s Bay and Filey, there lived in the Cliff Woods around Bradford a wild boar.
When the villagers of Bradford used to take their cattle to the woods or collect wood for their fires some of them were attacked by the wild boar. It was apparently a very ferocious animal and sometimes it even killed the villagers. Now the King at the time was John of Gaunt and he got very angry because he couldn’t collect taxes from dead people (they can today but that’s a different story!), so John of Gaunt offered a piece of land and a reward of gold to the person who could slay the boar.
Now there was a young man named John Rushworth and he knew where the wild boar used to drink at a well. He waited there until the wild boar came to drink and he killed the boar. The wild boar was so heavy that he couldn’t carry it all the way to the King as he had no horse and his knife was not sharp enough to cut of the boar’s head so instead he cut out the boar’s tongue and set off to take that to the King.
In the meantime, whilst Rushworth was on his way to see the king, along came another chap and saw the boar lying dead near the well. He looked around and couldn’t see anyone so he cut off the boar’s head and galloped off on his horse to see the King. He got to the King before Rushworth did, showed the King the boar’s head and said ‘I claim the land and gold that was offered as a reward for killing the boar’.
Just as the King was about to give the man his reward John Rushworth walked in and said ‘He didn’t kill the wild boar, I did. Here is the tongue.’
The other man argued but the King rejected his claim and gave the land and the money to John Rushworth.
The piece of land is called Hunt’s Yard and it is in Great Horton and if you look on the wall of the Residential Home now standing on the site you will find a plaque about John Rushworth, slayer of the wild boar.
In City Hall you can see many examples of the old Coat of Arms of the Borough of Bradford. On the left hand side of the shield there is a black goat that represents mohair and on the right a white ram which represents the wool trade .On the shield you will see the three hunting horns and on the chevron the little black image that looks like a drum represents the well that the wild boar of Bradford used to drink at.
