Abbots Bromley Horn Dance date of their growth-dropping. It is, therefore, just as likely that reindeer did survive somewhere in England at that period. The antlers are mounted on small heads carved from wood. Since 1981, the horns are legally the property of Abbots Bromley Parish Council. For 364 days a year, they are on display in St Nicholas Church. They were once kept in the main Village Hall, which is now the Goat's Head Inn, beside the Butter Cross. An alternative set of antlers (red deer) are kept to use when the dancers are asked, as they frequently are, to perform outside the
Abbots Bromley Horn Dance hunting lands in Needwood Forest and Cannock Chase surrounding Abbots Bromley. On this theory, the royal forester would have organised sympathetic magic rituals to ensure a plentiful catch each year, a tradition that survived into Christian times and gradually came to be seen as affirming the villagers' hunting rights. Even when the lands were granted to Burton Abbey in 1004 a forester would still need to have been employed. By the 16th century, when the abbey was dissolved, this was a hereditary position with the title "Forester of Bentylee" (Bentylee being the wooded area of the parish). From then until