Patrick Comerford
The Eagle and Child in Oxford is one of the celebrated literary pubs in England. It was once a regular haunt of CS Lewis and JRR Tolkien, two of the best-known writers of the 20th century, and other member of the Inklings.
The Eagle and Child closed during Covid in 2020. But plans to reopen it were unveiled this week, and planning permission has been given to restore the Grade II-listed building on St Giles, across the street from Saint Giles Church, the Lamb & Flag and Saint John’s College, Oxford.
The Eagle and Child was built ca 1840 but dates back to 1650. Today, it is owned by the Ellison Institute of Technology (EIT), which in turn is owned by the US tech billionaire Larry Ellison. But it is best known as the meeting place for the literary circle known as the Inklings, including Lewis, Tolkien and other academics. They regularly meet at the Eagle and Child, nicknamed it the Bird and the Baby, and a plaque inside commemorated their gatherings.
The latest plans to restore the pub were drawn up by Foster + Partners, who say they are taking a ‘conservation-led approach to restore and preserve as much of the original building as possible after years of dormancy’. They describe their proposals as ‘light-touch interventions,’ and include restoring the Rabbit Room, where the Inklings once met.
Their plans include a new dining room, while the lower levels of two adjacent buildings – No 50 and 51 St Giles – will become a café. Floor space above the pub and café would become workspace for EIT scholars, staff and fellows. The planning application approved this week includes a change of use of upper floors of 49-51 for private meeting space, part demolition of the two-storey rear extensions, the demolition of a boundary wall, the erection of a single-storey rear extension, alterations to the windows, roof and render, and the installation of insulation.
Next door to the Eagle and Child, Green’s Café had cramped floorspace over two storeys and a dedicated following for its homemade fare. EIT plans to reinstate a café with a basement bakery and a rear garden with additional seating.
Gerard Evenden of Foster + Partners is quoted as saying the design ‘preserves the unique character of the Eagle and Child and respects its many layers of history.’
He added that their ‘sensitive interventions’ are being ‘stitched together by a newly landscaped garden and restored passageway between the café and the pub – new social spaces that transition effortlessly from day to night.’
The Ellison Institute of Technology (EIT) says it is ‘committed to reopening’ the pub, but also says there is a ‘pressing need’ to protect both the pub and surrounding buildings, which were in an ‘extremely poor’ state.
EIT says it is committed to carrying out sensitive repairs that allow the heritage values of the buildings to be celebrated, and to reopen them for residents, tourists and the wider community. When EIT bought the building, it said it wanted to establish a campus in Oxford and announced it would ‘refurbish and reopen the iconic venue’.
The company’s founding director and CEO, Dr David Agus, said: ‘The Eagle and Child pub is a truly historic venue that has hosted some of the greatest minds Oxford has had to offer for over 300 years. We are humbled and proud to be able to safeguard this treasured pub’s future and continue its legacy as a place for brilliant people to come together, including for our Ellison scholars.’
Plans were previously approved to turn the place into a hotel, but several operators came and went and it shut during the Covid pandemic. Until recently, the pub was owned by Saint John’s College. At times, the college said it would retain the upper rooms for its own use for the time being, ‘although we are still hopeful of being able to continue with the original plan when the economic conditions allow.’
Back in 2022, Saint John’s College said: ‘Following consideration of options, the college instructed Savills to market the pub on a stand-alone basis with the current planning consent in place … enabling the pub to open again following refurbishment.’
Shaun Gunner, chair of the Tolkien Society, said then he was ‘encouraged’ that the college was ‘on the case’, but that the pub needed to ‘reopen as soon as possible … There's so many people who love that pub.’
Dave Richardson of the Oxford branch of the Campaign for Real Ale, said the pub was in bad condition: ‘The cellar needs a total revamp, there’s quite a lot of rot, there’s a bit of a rodent infestation … we are a bit concerned about this and we would like something to happen sooner rather than later.’
Saint John’s College also owned the Lamb & Flag across the street, another pub favoured by the Inklings. It too closed during Covid, but reopened recently more than two years after being taken over by a community group.
There has been a pub on the site of the Eagle and Child since 1650, it was used as a playhouse for Royalist soldiers during the English Civil War, and it was a popular haunt of the diarist Anthony Wood in the 17th centuryr
The first record of the pub’s present name is in 1684, when Richard Platt was granted a licence to hang out a sign depicting the coronet with an eagle and child that appears on the crest of the Earl of Derby.
The Eagle and Child was a modest beerhouse, rather than an inn like the Lamb & Flag across the road, and landlords in 19th century usually had a second occupation, probably, leaving much of the work of running the beerhouse to their wives.
From the 1930s, the Inklings met in the ‘Rabbit Room’ at the back of the pub. They included CS Lewis, JRR Tolkien, Charles Williams, Owen Barfield and Hugo Dyson. From late 1933, they met on Thursday evenings at Lewis’s rooms in Magdalen College, where they would read and discuss various material, including their unfinished manuscripts.
Their meetings were accompanied with more informal lunchtime gatherings at various Oxford pubs, and these became regular lunchtime meetings on Monday or Tuesday at the Eagle and Child, which they dubbed ‘the Bird and Baby’, in a room at the back known as the ‘Rabbit Room’.
The Thursday meetings petered out in October 1949, but the meetings at the Eagle and Child continued, and it was at one of those meetings in June 1950 that CS Lewis distributed the proofs for The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.
The membership of the Inklings changed over the years. Tolkien drifted away in the late 1950s, while Lewis was a central figure until he died in 1963. When the Eagle and Child was modernised in 1962, the Rabbit Room lost its privacy and the Inklings changed their allegiance to the the Lamb & Flag on the other side of St Giles. The meetings in the the Lamb & Flag were abandoned soon after Lewis died in 1963.
The first record of the pub’s name is from 1684, and is variously said to originate in the legend of Ganymede being abducted to Mount Olympus by the eagle of Zeus, or in the heraldic crest of the Stanley family, Earls of Derby, and a story of a baby found in an eagle’s nest.
One legend tells of Sir Thomas Lathom who greatly desired a male heir, but whose wife was elderly and their only child was a daughter Isabel. One day, while he and his wife were walking in the woods on his estate, they heard the cry of an infant. Servants were sent to investigate and returned with a young child they found lying in the grass below an eagle’s eyre. In another version, the child was found in an eagle’s nest. The child was well dressed, and Sir Thomas and his wife decided to bring him up as their own son, naming him ‘Oskatel’.
The tradition of finding a child unharmed in an eagle’s nest is found in folklore in many parts of Europe. King Pepin was said to have found a child in similar circumstances, while Alfred the Great hears a child crying while he was hunting, and his servants found a male child in an eagle’s eyre, dressed in purple with gold bracelets, signs of Saxon nobility. The king had the child baptised with the name ‘Nestingium’ and had him educated.
Perhaps these tales gave Sir Thomas Lathom his idea in the first place. Having despaired of ever having a son, he had an affair with a younger woman who became pregnant. He wanted his wife to accept the son without her uncovering his infidelity, so he arranged the ‘discovery’ of the child. However, on his deathbed, Lathom confessed that Oskatel was his son, and Isabel, as his only legitimate heir, inherited the estate.
Isabel Lathom married Sir John Stanley, ancestor of the Earls of Stanley, who adopted as their crest an eagle looking down on the child as if about to devour him, emphasising the triumph of the legitimate heiress.
The Stanleys became one of the most powerful families in England: John Stanley’s great-grandson, Thomas Stanley (1435-1504), 1st Earl of Derby, changed the course of the Battle of Bosworth in 1485 and was the stepfather of Henry VII through his marriage to Lady Margaret Beaufort in 1472.
The descendants of John Stanley and Isobel Lathom also included William Stanley (1474-1552) who lived at Comberford Hall, near Lichfield and Tamworth after he married the much younger Margaret Comberford (1494-1568), daughter of Thomas Comberford of Comberford. She was a sister of Humphrey Comberford, of Comberford Hall and Master of the Guild of Saint Mary and Saint John the Baptist, Lichfield, in 1530; Richard Comberford, putative ancestor of the Comerfords of Kilkenny and Wexford; Henry Comberford, Precentor of Lichfield Cathedral; and John Comberford of Wednesbury.
The descendants of these lines of the Stanley and Comberford families continued to live in the Lichfield area for many generations. William Stanley’s will, made in 1552, is in a collection in the Bodleian Archives and Manuscripts in Oxford.
Today, there are about 25 other pubs in England called the Eagle and Child, most of them in places associated with the Stanley family. Despite this week’s announcement, the Eagle and Child in Oxford is not expected to reopen before 2027. With the Lamb & Flag now open on one side of St Giles and the Eagle and Child reopening on the other, the street could find even more coaches parked there as tourists hop off for ‘selfies’ with the Inklings on both sides of St Giles.
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