Lamb & Flag, Oxford

Pub in 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. In 1613 The pub is a Grade II listed building

The Lamb & Flag had suffered a loss of revenues since the start of the COVID 19 pandemic, and closed on January 31, 2021. 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. 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. 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. These meetings were soon abandoned after Lewis's death in 1963. The novelist Graham Greene drank at the pub while a student at Balliol College. 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, and in the pilot episode of Endeavour.