TOWIE The Boars Head
The Boars Head, Billericay Road, Herongate, Brentwood, Essex, CM13 3PS
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| The Boars Head Another pub on the route between The Travelodge and Brentwood. Just three miles south of bustling Brentwood, yet surrounded by woodlands and fields in the unspoilt village of Herongate, The Boar's Head is a Grade II listed country pub overlooking the village pond close to Button Common. It started life as three Tudor cottages and first became licensed premises in the 18th century. Herongate is an attractive Essex village in a proposed conservation area, once part of the Heron Hall Estate owned by one of the county's most influential and ancient families, the Tyrells. Only the moat survives from the grand Tyrell manor house today, but The Boar's Head pub sign still retains the Tyrell crest, a boar's head holding a peacock's feather in its mouth. The family boasted many noted parliamentarians and close servants to the Crown in the 14th and 15th centuries, and Heron Hall must once have been a substantial home, a brick-built castle with round towers, demolished in 1788. Nearby Thorndon Hall, a Georgian Palladian country house with landscaping by Capability Brown, was formerly the country seat of the equally distinguished Petre family, and the gardens and deer park bordered Herongate and The Boar's Head. Famously, the grounds once held Marengo, Napoleon's war horse, captured by the 11th Baron Lord William Petre at Waterloo. An historic small inn with many well-preserved original features, The Boar's Head serves delicious pub food from an extensive menu and an ever-changing specials board, available all day. |