The Lamb & Flag | |
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General information | |
Address | 12 St Giles',Oxford, OX1 3JS |
Coordinates | 51°45′27″N1°15′34″W / 51.7574°N 1.2594°W |
Opened | 1613 [1] |
Owner | St John's College, Oxford |
The Lamb & Flag is a pub in St Giles' Street, Oxford, England. It is owned by St John's College. Historically, profits funded DPhil student scholarships. The pub lies just north of the main entrance to St John's College. Lamb & Flag Passage runs through the south side of the building, connecting St Giles' with Museum Road, where there is an entrance to Keble College to the rear of the pub.
The name of the pub comes from the symbol of Christ as the victorious Lamb of God (Agnus Dei) of the Book of Revelation, carrying a banner with a cross, and often gashed in the side. This is also a symbol of St John the Baptist, and so is emblematic of ownership by the College of St John the Baptist.
In January 2021, St John's College announced the pub would close and cease operations on 31 January.
In September 2021, The Inklings, a community interest company, signed a 15-year lease to re-open the pub. The pub reopened in October 2022.
The Lamb had been operating since at least 1566, situated just south of St John's. [2] In 1613 [1] the college moved the pub to its current site (the old site is today the Dolphin Quadrangle). [2] Though owned by the college, this new site was somewhat further away from the college's main buildings. Since the pub's move, construction of the Sir Thomas White and Kendrew Quadrangles in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries has led to the pub being once again close to St John's activities.
St John's took over the management of the pub in 1997, and used all pub profits to fund scholarships for graduate students. [3] The pub is a Grade II listed building [4]
The Lamb & Flag had suffered a loss of revenues since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, and closed on January 31, 2021. [5] [6] In September 2021, The Inklings, a community interest company, signed a 15-year lease to re-open it. The pub resumed service in October 2022.
It is believed that Thomas Hardy wrote much of his novel Jude the Obscure in this pub.[ citation needed ] In this novel, the city of Christminster is a thinly-disguised Oxford, and it is thought that a pub that appears in certain passages of the novel is based on The Lamb & Flag. [7]
In 1962, following modernisation of The Eagle and Child on the other side of St. Giles, the Inklings, a literary group including C.S. Lewis, started meeting at The Lamb and Flag. [8] [9] These meetings were soon abandoned after Lewis's death in 1963. [10]
The novelist Graham Greene drank at the pub while a student at Balliol College. [11] and it was mentioned in P.D. James' book "The Children of Men". The pub also featured frequently in episodes of the ITV detective drama Inspector Morse , [12] and in the pilot episode of Endeavour.
Clive Staples Lewis was a British writer, literary scholar, and Anglican lay theologian. He held academic positions in English literature at both Oxford University and Cambridge University. He is best known as the author of The Chronicles of Narnia, but he is also noted for his other works of fiction, such as The Screwtape Letters and The Space Trilogy, and for his non-fiction Christian apologetics, including Mere Christianity, Miracles, and The Problem of Pain.
John Ronald Reuel Tolkien was an English writer and philologist. He was the author of the high fantasy works The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings.
The Inklings were an informal literary discussion group associated with J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis at the University of Oxford for nearly two decades between the early 1930s and late 1949. The Inklings were literary enthusiasts who praised the value of narrative in fiction and encouraged the writing of fantasy. The best-known, apart from Tolkien and Lewis, were Charles Williams, and Owen Barfield.
Magdalen College is a constituent college of the University of Oxford. It was founded in 1458 by William of Waynflete. It has the highest total assets of any Oxford college, with £977 million as of 2022, and is one of the strongest academically, setting the record for the highest Norrington Score in 2010 and topping the table twice since then. It is home to several of the university's distinguished chairs, including the Agnelli-Serena Professorship, the Sherardian Professorship, and the four Waynflete Professorships.
Lady Margaret Hall (LMH) is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in England, located on the banks of the River Cherwell at Norham Gardens in north Oxford and adjacent to the University Parks. The college is more formally known under its current royal charter as "The Principal and Fellows of the College of the Lady Margaret in the University of Oxford".
Regent's Park College is a permanent private hall of the University of Oxford, situated in central Oxford, just off St Giles'.
St Cross College is a constituent college of the University of Oxford in England. Founded in 1965, St Cross is an all-graduate college with gothic and traditional-style buildings on a central site in St Giles', just south of Pusey Street. It aims to match the structure, life and support of undergraduate colleges, with the relaxed atmosphere of an all-graduate college.
St John's College is a constituent college of the University of Oxford. Founded as a men's college in 1555, it has been coeducational since 1979. Its founder, Sir Thomas White, intended to provide a source of educated Roman Catholic clerics to support the Counter-Reformation under Queen Mary.
The Eagle and Child, nicknamed The Bird and Baby, is a pub in St Giles', Oxford, England, owned by St. John's College, Oxford and operated by Mitchells & Butlers as a Nicholson's pub. The pub had been part of an endowment belonging to University College since the 17th century. It has associations with the Inklings writers' group which included J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis. In 2005, 25 other pubs had the same name.
The Notion Club Papers is an abandoned novel by J. R. R. Tolkien, written during 1945 and published posthumously in Sauron Defeated, the 9th volume of The History of Middle-earth. It is a time travel story, written while The Lord of the Rings was being developed. The Notion Club is a fictionalization of Tolkien's own such club, the Inklings.
The Mythopoeic Awards for literature and literary studies are given annually for outstanding works in the fields of myth, fantasy, and the scholarly study of these areas. Established by the Mythopoeic Society in 1971, the Mythopoeic Fantasy Award is given for "fiction in the spirit of the Inklings", and the Scholarship Award for non-fiction work. The award is a statuette of a seated lion, with a plaque on the base. It has drawn resemblance to, and is often called, the "Aslan".
The Mythopoeic Society (MythSoc) is a non-profit organization devoted to the study of mythopoeic literature, particularly the works of J. R. R. Tolkien, Charles Williams, and C. S. Lewis, all members of The Inklings, an informal group of writers who met weekly in C. S. Lewis' rooms at Magdalen College, Oxford, from the early 1930s through late 1949.
Richard Cromwell Carpenter was an English architect. He is chiefly remembered as an ecclesiastical and tractarian architect working in the Gothic style.
St Giles' is a wide boulevard leading north from the centre of Oxford, England. At its northern end, the road divides into Woodstock Road to the left and Banbury Road to the right, both major roads through North Oxford. At the southern end, the road continues as Magdalen Street at the junction with Beaumont Street to the west. Also to the west halfway along the street is Pusey Street. Like the rest of North Oxford, much of St Giles' is owned by St John's College.
Museum Road is a short road in central Oxford, England. It leads to the Oxford University Museum of Natural History and the Radcliffe Science Library at its eastern end where it meets Parks Road. At its west end is a junction with Blackhall Road. It continues as the Lamb & Flag Passage past the Lamb & Flag public house on St Giles', a meeting place of J.R.R. Tolkien and the Inklings.
Horspath is a village and civil parish in South Oxfordshire about 3+1⁄2 miles (5.6 km) east of the centre of Oxford, England. The 2011 census recorded the parish's population as 1,378.
Sandfield Road is a road in the suburb of Headington, Oxford, England. It is close to the John Radcliffe Hospital. It was home to author and academic J. R. R. Tolkien in the 1950s and 1960s.
The following is a timeline of the history of the city, University and colleges of Oxford, England.
St John's College Boat Club, Oxford (SJCBC) is a rowing club part of the University of Oxford, England, located on the River Thames at Oxford. The club was founded in 1863.