The Broad was a folk custom found in the Cotswolds, an area of south-central England, during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
The tradition entails the use of a hobby horse with a bull's head that is mounted on a pole and carried by an individual hidden under a sackcloth.
It represents a regional variation of a "hooded animal" tradition that appears in various forms throughout the British Isles.
[3] There are two records, from Hawkesbury and Leighterton in Gloucestershire, in which the Broad consisted of a turnip or swede which had been hollowed out and had a candle placed within it.
[3] The tradition was located in a triangular area bounded by Stroud, Cricklade, and Chipping Sodbury.