Wow!!! Well done Rebekah! It is indeed the Eagle and Child (local rude students call it The Bird & the Brat. lol It is the closest pub to the college where I stay - Lady Margaret Hall and the tourists are nearly all gone when we go over after dinner.
According to Wiki -
A small, narrow building, the pub reputedly served as the lodgings of the Chancellor of the Exchequer during the English Civil War (1642–49), when Oxford was the Royalist capital. The landmark served as a pay house for the Royalist army, and pony auctions were held in the rear courtyard. These claims are inconsistent with the earliest date usually given for construction of the pub, 1650, and the fact that the pub lies outside the city walls may also give some cause for doubt.
The first record of the pub's name is from 1684 and is said to derive from the crest of the Earl of Derby. The image is said to refer to a story of a noble-born baby having been found in an eagle's nest.
The Inklings was a group of Oxford writers which included C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien, Charles Williams and Hugo Dyson. From late 1933 they met on Thursday evenings at Lewis's college rooms at Magdalen, where they would read and discuss various material, including their unfinished manuscripts. These meetings were accompanied with more informal lunchtime gatherings at various Oxford pubs which coalesced into a regular meeting held on Mondays or Tuesday lunchtimes at the Eagle and Child, in a private lounge at the back of the pub known as the 'Rabbit Room'.
The formal meetings ended in October 1949 when interest in them finally petered out, but the meetings at the Eagle and Child continued, and it was at one of those meetings in June 1950 that C.S. Lewis distributed the proofs for The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.
The membership of the Inklings changed over the years, Tolkien, for example, drifting away from the meetings in the late 1950s, but Lewis was a central figure until his death in 1963. More recently, the pub was the regular watering hole of Colin Dexter, who created Inspector Morse.
And you have been there too Bek! The world is a small place isn't it!
Their photos plaque with their signatures hang on the walls.
ReplyDeleteI loved C. S. Lewis' 'Screwtape Letters' and of course his 'Chronicles of Narnia'.
I could imagine C. S. Lewis sitting at the table in a small room, having a pint and smoking his pipe. I felt as if I could walk through one of the big cabinates and reach Narnia! (I was only about 10)
The steak and kidney pie was good! Big chunks of meat... mmm..
You cannot beat a good steak and kidney pie Bek. Yuuummm I kind of new that it would be C.S. Lewis. lol
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