The Lamb & Flag

The Lamb and Flag is a historic pub in Covent Garden, London, housed in a rare timber-framed building dating to 1688 and famous for a 1679 attack on Poet Laureate John Dryden. First recorded as The Coopers Arms in 1772, the venue earned the nickname The Bucket of Blood for hosting bare-knuckle prize fights before being renamed in 1833. Brewery company Fuller's has owned the pub since 2013.

London Β· from the walk β€œLast Orders Through the Ages” Β· audio ~4 min Β· Generated

Lamb and Flag, 33 Rose Street, Covent Garden, London WC2E 9EB

Why was the Lamb and Flag pub in London nicknamed The Bucket of Blood?

Take a look down this narrow alley... and welcome to one of the most blood-soaked drinking spots in all of London. This is the Lamb and Flag.......... The very first mention of a pub on this site dates back to seventeen seventy-two, when it was known as The Coopers Arms. In eighteen thirty-three, the tavern was renamed the Lamb and Flag... the name that still proudly shows above its doors today.......... But the building itself? It's one of the very few left in central London with a timber frame, dating possibly as early as sixteen eighty-eight. You're standing beside something genuinely rare... a structure that survived while the city reinvented itself around it.......... Now, about that name. Why would a pub be called the Lamb and Flag? It's derived from the Bible verse John one twenty-nine, where John the Baptist sees Jesus and exclaims, "Behold the Lamb of God." The symbol was used by the Knights Templar and is also that of the Middle Temple. Crusader imagery... on a pub sign. Only in England.......... But before it got that pious new name, locals knew this place by a far darker one... The Bucket of Blood. A room above the pub was used as a venue for bare-knuckle prize fights, a brutal form of entertainment that packed them in every week. It wasn't until the Marquess of Queensberry Rules were introduced in eighteen sixty-seven that boxing began to move away from the chaotic bare-knuckle contests of earlier decades.......... And then there's the story that earned this alley a permanent place in literary history. Picture this. December the eighteenth, sixteen seventy-nine. Just before eight in the evening. The poet John Dryden, England's first Poet Laureate, was walking home from Wills Coffee House, a popular gathering spot for London's literary wits. His poem "An Essay upon Satire" had savagely mocked King Charles the Second, his mistresses, and most pointedly... the Earl of Rochester. Rochester was not amused. Dryden was attacked right here, in Rose Alley, behind the Lamb and Flag, by thugs hired by the Earl of Rochester.......... He survived... barely. Dryden offered fifty pounds for the identity of his attackers, placing the reward in the London Gazette, and even offered a Royal Pardon if one of them would confess. No one Ever claimed the reward.......... Today, if you head upstairs, you'll find the Dryden Room, named after that very poet whose satirical writing made him so many enemies. And if you're looking for what's on tap... Fuller's has owned the pub since twenty thirteen and ran a sympathetic renovation. It remains a traditional pub without music, muzak, or games machines. Just good cask ale and three centuries of stories soaked into the walls.

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