"The Crab and Boar near Chievely was originally known as the Blue Boar Inn. As pub names go, this one has a good story to tell. Outside the inn today there stands a rather forlorn-looking sandstone boar that has been painted blue. It was originally carved in Italy for Lord Ingilby of Ripley castle. He was on a grand tour of Italy in the sixteenth century when he came across the famous Il Porcellino statue by Pietro Tacca at the Uffizi. Ingilby was sufficiently taken with the design that he ordered two copies, which were taken back to Ripley where they sat outside his castle until the English Civil War. When Oliver Cromwell’s Parliamentary Army billeted themselves on Ripley Castle, North Yorkshire they appropriated one of the boars and marched off with it.

The boar travelled south with Cromwell’s army from the Battle of Marston Moor (2 July 1644) all the way to the Battle of Newbury on 27 October 1644. That morning the statue was left behind at a nearby inn five miles from the battled and here it has stayed ever since –donating its name to the thatched inn in question - until it was changed the Crab and Boar in the twenty-first century.

Renowned for its food – and a very popular wedding destination – the Crab and Boar has 14 bedrooms, located in outbuildings. Walls are decorated in tartan and old wood with occasional antiques and a few four poster beds. The decorative hand of the Epicurean Collection, pioneers of the cozy, upmarket trendy British pub, is immediately recognisable."