Lamb & Flag: Dryden's Alley
Why is it significant?
Squeeze into Rose Street, a narrow alley that bends between old brick walls, and you come to a little pub with small-paned windows and a timber front: the Lamb and Flag. On a warm evening the drinkers spill out into the alley, pint glasses in hand, exactly as they have for centuries.
Key Facts
| Place | Lamb & Flag: Dryden's Alley |
|---|---|
| Address | 33 Rose Street, London WC2E 9EB, United Kingdom |
| Geo Coordinates | 51.51170, -0.12570 |
| Part of Walk | Curtain Up: London's West End Theatreland, from the Savoy to Covent Garden and Leicester Square |
| Generated | Generated |
Squeeze into Rose Street, a narrow alley that bends between old brick walls, and you come to a little pub with small-paned windows and a timber front: the Lamb and Flag. On a warm evening the drinkers spill out into the alley, pint glasses in hand, exactly as they have for centuries.
There has been a tavern here since at least the eighteenth century, and Rose Street was once a much rougher place than the polished Covent Garden around it today. The story goes that bare-knuckle prize fights were staged in and around the pub, and that it earned the nickname the Bucket of Blood. Treat that one with a pinch of salt... but the alley has at least one real assault on its record.
On the night of 18 December 1679, the poet John Dryden was walking home through Rose Street when a gang of men set upon him and beat him with cudgels. Dryden was the most famous writer in England, Poet Laureate and a playwright for the King's Company at Drury Lane, and London quickly decided who was to blame. A vicious satire had been going around mocking powerful courtiers, and it was widely believed that Dryden had written it. Suspicion fell on John Wilmot, the Earl of Rochester, the wildest rake of Charles II's court. Nobody was ever convicted, and the satire was probably by someone else altogether. A plaque on the pub remembers the attack.
Dryden was the king of the theatre world of his day. Just round the corner, at Will's Coffee House on Russell Street, he held court every afternoon, with his own chair kept by the fire in winter and on the balcony in summer, and young writers crowded in hoping for a word. Restoration London was small: playhouse, coffee house, tavern and alley were all a few minutes apart, and gossip moved faster than any of them.
Theatre has always been a dangerous business, it seems, especially for critics and satirists. Now walk to the top of Rose Street, cross Long Acre, and take Mercer Street north to a meeting of seven streets around a tall pillar.