The Lamb & Flag

A pub that funds doctorates — St John’s takes the profits and turns them into graduate scholarships, which makes it the only round in Oxford with a footnote.

The Lamb was operating just south of St John’s College by at least 1566; the Lamb & Flag itself dates from 1613. It sits on St Giles almost opposite the Eagle and Child, and between them the two pubs carried most of Oxford’s literary drinking. St John’s took over its management in 1997 and put the profits into scholarships for graduate students, so the pub has quietly funded doctorates for a quarter of a century. It closed in January 2021 after 450 years, and reopened in 2022 after a campaign to save it. When the Eagle and Child was modernised in 1962 the Inklings — Lewis, Tolkien and the rest — moved their Tuesday sessions across the road to here, which makes it the second half of a literary pilgrimage most people only half complete.