Patrick Comerford
I have been discussing a number of well-known pubs in Oxford in recent weeks, including the King’s Arms facing the Bodleian’s Weston Library, and the Port Mahon and the Oranges and Lemons, both in St Clement’s. Sadly, the Eagle and Child on Saint Giles’, the pub where the Inklings once met, has been closed for many years, and is still suffering a lengthy refurbishment.
But before I caught bus back from Oxford to Milton Keynes earlier this week, I stopped once again in the Lamb and Flag, across the street from the Eagle and Child and a place that was saved from a threatened closure in recent years.
The Lamb and Flag, beside Saint John’s College on Saint Giles’, closed briefly after takings fell during the Covid-19 pandemic. But it was speedily saved by a community interest group calling themselves – appropriately – the Inklings, and was soon reopened.
The Lamb and Flag is owned by Saint John’s College, and is just north of the main college entrance. Lamb and Flag Passage runs through the south side of the pub, linking St Giles’ with Museum Road, and there is an entrance to Keble College behind the pub.
The name of the Lamb and Flag derives from the symbol of Christ as the Lamb of God (Agnus Dei) in Saint John’s Gospel and the Book of Revelation, carrying a banner with a red cross. This is also a symbol of Saint John the Baptist and the rebus of Saint John’s College, and so the emblem signified how the college has owned the pub.
The Lamb and Flag dates back to at least 1566, when the first pub stood just south of Saint John’s College. An earlier Tudor building on the site of 12 St Giles’ belonged to Godstow Abbey, but Saint John’s College owned the site by 1573. The college moved the pub to that site on 1613, and the old site of the pub is now the Dolphin Quadrangle.
Henry Harbert or Harbard, who had run the earlier hostelry on the south side of Saint John’s as the Lamb, opened the inn at the site of 12 St Giles’ in 1613, and he took the name with him. The new site was further away from the main buildings of the college, but many years later, when the Sir Thomas White and Kendrew quadrangles were built in the 20th and 21st centuries, the pub found it was close to Saint John’s once again.
The pub is Listed Grade II and is in three parts: the oldest at the rear is mediaeval; the middle section is around 400 years old; and the front part is Georgian.
Originally the Lamb and Flag Inn only occupied No 12, the large building on the right. But in 1960 it expanded into the ground floor and basement of No 13, the taller narrow building to the left. Since then it has occupied both properties.
Hall’s Brewery took a lease on the pub from Saint John’s in 1829. By 1861, it was described as an hotel.
No 13, the tall narrow house next door to the pub, had a very narrow frontage of 3 yards 2 feet 2 inches in 1772, but was described as ‘a newly-built dwelling house with a commanding shop front’ in 1870, and was held on a lease from the Master and Scholars of Balliol College, Oxford.
Father John O’Fallon Pope, who was the master of the predecessor to Campion Hall at 11 St Giles’, bought No 13 Saint Giles’ in 1903. Father Joseph Rickaby, the chaplain of Campion Hall, was living there in 1921 with three boarders – a Belgian missionary and two students – and a butler and a footman.
No 13 was bought by Saint John’s College when Campion Hall moved to Brewer Street in 1936, and from 1937 to 1955 No 13 was the office of the Registrar of Births and Deaths for Oxford.
The Lamb and Flag at No 12 expanded in 1960 to include the ground floor and basement of No 13, and has occupied both Nos 12 and 13 since then, some times with student accommodation upstairs.
The pub may have inspired Thomas Hardy when he was writing Jude the Obscure, although others say the Lamb and Flag in Jude the Obscure was actually the Turf Tavern. Graham Greene drank in the pub while he was a student at Balliol College. The Lamb and Flag is also mentioned by PD James in The Children of Men and it features frequently in episodes of the ITV detective drama Inspector Morse.
Meanwhile, the Inklings had been meeting at the Eagle and Child across the street on the other side of St Giles in the 1930s and 1940s. They included CS Lewis and JRR Tolkien, but also met in other places in Oxford, including Magdalen College. When the Eagle and Child was ‘modernised’ in 1962, the Inklings started meeting at the Lamb and Flag. However, these meetings came to an end after CS Lewis died in 1963.
Saint John’s College took back the licence of the pub in 1997, and, after initially threatening to close it, ran it as a free house. The upstairs rooms were converted into student accommodation, and DPhil students were offered financial support from the pub’s profits through Lamb and Flag studentships worth up to £12,000 a year.
But the Lamb and Flag suffered a loss of revenues during the Covid-19 pandemic and the Lamb & Flag (Oxford) Ltd, a company owned by Saint John’s College, announced on 31 January 2021 that it would close.
Although the pub closed temporarily, it remained in college ownership, and the lease was bought in September 2021 by a Community Interest Company called the Inklings, and the Lamb and Flag reopened in October 2022.
The Inklings Group – named after the original literary circle that included JRR Tolkien, CS Lewis and others – is a diverse and eclectic mix of Oxford people, past and present, scientists and entrepreneurs, writers and artists, town and gown, as well as local businesses and suppliers.
They brought together several hundred people to save the Lamb and Flag. Saint John’s College shared their vision and supported the relaunch of the pub, aimed at local philanthropy and positive impact rather than profit.
The character of the Lamb and Flag has been preserved, with only light redecoration and refurbishment. Lamb and Flag ‘merch’ is on sale, at the bar including pins, mugs, patches, tote bags and T-shirts.
An invitation over the door in Lamb and Flag Passage is said inscribed in ‘Elvish’, the dwarf runes adopted by Tolkien from Anglo-Saxon and Scandinavian scripts, and says: ‘Speak, Friend, and Enter’.
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