The annual Boar’s Head Ceremony took place on Tuesday 25th March in London when Liverymen from the Worshipful Company of Butchers (WCB) processed from Butchers’ Hall to Mansion House to present a Boar’s Head to the Rt Hon Lord Mayor who received the presentation together with the Lady Mayoress.
The Boar’s Head procession was led in style by the Epping Forest Pipe Band and was a crowd stopper on the streets of the City with pedestrians, tourists and office workers stopping to film and take pictures as the bagpipes and drums caught the attention of those on the route.
The WCB Master John Allton Jones commented: “It’s been another most enjoyable occasion today and it really is an honour to keep up these long standing traditions that add colour and a sense of history to our great city.
“We met the Rt Hon the Lord Mayor and Lady Mayoress at Mansion House, and as tradition has it we were asked to pay our annual rent for land that we no longer use and that the Lord Mayor no longer actually rents, but tradition is tradition and we respectfully uphold that!”
Historic background
The annual ceremony dates back to 1343 making it one of the oldest events held in the City of London. It started when the monks at Greyfriars Monastery complained to the City Authorities that butchers were throwing away “offal and ordure” in the public street.
So, the Authorities gave the butchers a piece of land, next to the Fleet (Flete) River to clean their livestock’s entrails and granted them permission to dispose of the offal in the ‘Flete Ditch’.
By granting this land the butchers were required, in perpetuity, to repair and maintain a wharf and render a boar’s head each year to the Lord Mayor of London at their own cost.
The 2025 event started with a tasty lunch of Old English Pork sausage & mash as the main course at Butchers’ Hall and ended with the sampling of brawn at the Mansion House together with a Champagne drinks reception.
