The Lamb and Flag

The Lamb and Flag stands tucked away on Rose Street in London, close to Covent Garden. The building has been a pub since at least the 1770s and has carried that name since 1833. Much of its seventeenth-century timber frame still survives behind a front rebuilt in 1958. The earlier version wore a parapet along the top, with a carved lamb and flag at its centre.

The imagery is religious: the lamb comes from the Gospel of St John, and the flag is the banner of St George. An earlier name, the Bucket of Blood, came from the prize fighting of the day. The alley beside the pub leads through to Lazenby Court, and halfway along it sits a plaque. It mentions Charles Dickens, said to have visited, and Samuel Butler, who died in a house on the pub's own street. Butler, a royalist in the Civil War and author of the satirical poem Hudibras, lies buried nearby at St Paul's Covent Garden. The poet John Dryden was attacked here in 1679, supposedly at the request of Louise de Keroualle, a mistress of Charles II.

The streets around have shifted: Little Hart Street is now Floral Street, and its extension cut away parts of Rose Street. The building just in front and to the right once housed the Westminster Fire Office, one of London's first fire insurers. Plaques around the pub still carry brewery names, among them Barclay Perkins, a London firm founded in 1616. Inside, the historic interior gets crowded at busy times. Even the building's age stays an open argument: one sign gives 1623, another 1628 or 1638.