WHAT'S in a name? Quite a lot judging by the number of people who responded to our plea to come up with the reason why the Hare and Hounds on Charlton Down is known locally as the Pig and Whistle.

The pub has now been reopened by Steve and Elaine Mancini after being closed for most of the last three years.

Joan Rogers lived at the pub from 1949 to 1955 and it was called the Hare and Hounds then but she thinks it was originally called the Pig and Whistle - way back before we moved in'.

Jacqueline Waller from Wildhern, said: "Local lore has it that when Sonner Bonner ran the pub he had a pig and he used to whistle at it."

Legendary landlord Sonner Bonner is also mentioned by John Porter.

"For many years the public house bore a pictorial sign of a pig playing an old tin whistle and as a kid I often wondered why a hare and hound were not portrayed," he said.

He offers two explanations.

One could be a connection with French prisoners of war from Napoleonic times - piggin and wassail being drinking vessels.

"However I prefer the version told to me when I was a youngster, by the landlord Sonner Bonner.

"In the first half of the last century they did have piggins' that were used as drinking vessels and the wassail was a kind of whistle which was built into the handle of the pint mug or tankard.

"When the vessel was empty and the landlord was not immediately on hand the thirsty regular would blow into the handle of the piggin and whistle him up for a refill."

The pig and whistle is a traditional pub name however and not unique to Charlton Down.

In the nineteenth century the pub name was explained as pig - derived from piggen, a receptacle for liquids to drink while the whistle was from the word wassail.

The word wassail goes back to Saxon times as waes hael (be hale) which would be shouted out by the lord of the manor and and the crowd would reply drink hael.