Bishop The Boar

In March 2016, the Bishop Auckland Town Team launched it’s very own mascot!

Bishop the Boar has been created to raise the profile of the town and promote the area at the town’s events.

Bishop the Boar will appear at the Bishop Auckland Food Festival next month where a “boar hunt” will take place throughout the town.  It’s a fun event for children to spot pictures of different boars in the town shops.

Chair of the Town Team, Alan Anderson said; “This friendlier version of the poor boar is expected to attend all the main events, take pictures with the children of the community and encourage people to learn about the interesting myth of the boar.”

The mascot is based on the legend of a fierce wild boar who once terrorised the land of Bishop Auckland, eating crops and attacking people.

This urged the Prince Bishop to offer a huge reward for its capture which promoted the knight, Sir Richard Pollard to come along and heroically kill the boar (by chopping off its tongue!).

Unfortunately, the brave knight fell asleep with the token of his exhausting victory – the tongue- placed inside his pocket. While Sir Richard slept, another man came along, picked up the boar and claimed the reward!

When Sir Richard realised he had been frauded, he walked up to the Bishop, tongue in hand in order to prove that he had killed the beast, and, for his efforts won the Pollards area in Bishop Auckland.

Mayor of Bishop Auckland, Cllr Lee Brownson said: “He will be at all events including the New Car Show, Monster Saturday as well as the Christmas events in order to promote the town and have his photo taken with the children.”

Town Team member Clive Auld added; “We have books available for the children to read all about the legend of the Boar. It’ll be interesting for people to learn about the myth and why we have Pollards in the town.”

The book entitled ‘Pollard and the Boar: The Legend of Bishop Auckland’ is written by local historian Barbara Laurie and illustrated by Bob McManners.

The Northern Echo press release, 2nd March 2016