Wild Boar

  John Naylor was a timber merchant from Warrington so when he came to build himself a country home in 1866 of course his impulse was to feature wood and so was created Beeston Towers, a sort of mock Tudor extravagance.  It sits on a hill surrounded by woodland and when he lived there was also above his work-sheds.  After his time it was sold and converted into a girls school  but that eventually moved to Chester. The building was once again sold and became a restaurant but today it is the Wild Boar Country House Hotel and a popular wedding venue.

I don't know why the name Wild Boar was chosen but I imagine in past times the area would be one that would be the perfect terrain for these animals, although it has been hundreds of years since they roamed around the woods, wiped out by hunting.  Despite this their name lives on in names of inns and here

 
 in Cumbria as Wild Boar Fell with its distinctive flat top  I can imagine them roaming the fells and drinking water from this stream which eventually becomes the River Ure.  Despite wild boar becoming extinct in Britain it has accidentally been reintroduced as these wily beasts have escaped from farms and zoos.  They haven't made their way back to Cumbria but there are pockets of wild boar around the country, mainly in southern England.  Unlike other wildlife escapees they find the climate perfectly to their taste as they were originally a native species and these pictures of them in the Forest of Dean show them foraging in the snow here.

 An entry to ABC Wednesday, a journey through the alphabet, this week sojourning at W here