London pub names
the odd ones, what they actually mean, and the stations named after them
A pub sign was a shop front for people who could not read, so the names are pictures first and words second: an animal, a saint, a trade, a coat of arms. That is why so many are odd, and it is also why the explanations attached to them are so often invented, because an odd name invites a story, and a good story outlives the truth. Name and pub sign are the same thing read two ways, which is why the pub signs worth walking to are the ones whose names nobody can explain. Seven pubs here, all of them open, with what is on record and what is not.
Where the odd names come from
Four sources cover most of them. A trade or a guild, which is why a pub by the cloth fair is called the Hand and Shears after the shears that cut the cloth. An object nobody uses any more, like the boot and flogger, a two-part tool for driving a cork into a bottle. A sport, usually a cruel one now abolished. And a person, sometimes a specific one, sometimes a whole vanished occupation.
The unreliable ones are the etymologies that turn a plain English name into a corrupted foreign phrase. The Old Bull and Bush is supposed to be a mangling of Boulogne Bouche, for Henry VIII's capture of Boulogne harbour. No source connects the pub to Boulogne at all, and the history in the story is wrong twice: Henry took the town on the 14th of September 1544, not in 1542, and England held it until March 1550, which is under six years rather than eight. A bull and a bush is a bull and a bush. The bush was the oldest tavern sign in the country, a bundle of greenery hung out to say there was wine inside.
The stations named after pubs
Five Underground stations take their names directly from a public house: Angel, after the Angel Inn that stood where Islington High Street meets Pentonville Road; Elephant and Castle, after a coaching inn; Manor House, after the Manor House Tavern on Seven Sisters Road, which named the crossroads before it named the station; Royal Oak; and Swiss Cottage, after the Swiss Tavern of 1804, built as a Swiss chalet on the site of a tollgate keeper's cottage.
Maida Vale is a sixth at one remove: the station is named for the district, and the district for a pub. That pub was the Hero of Maida (singular, not Heroes) on the Edgware Road near the Regent's Canal, its board showing Sir John Stuart, who was made Count of Maida after the battle of the 4th of July 1806.
Three of the six namesakes are no longer pubs, which is worth knowing before going to look for them. The Royal Oak by the station became the Railway Tap and is now The Porchester. Ye Olde Swiss Cottage closed in February 2025. The Hero of Maida closed in 1992 and is gone; a different pub took the name in 2018, at 55 Formosa Street, in what had been the Truscott Arms.
The entries
The Hand and Shears
1 Middle Street EC1A 7JA Nearest station: Barbican
Named for the shears that cut the cloth. St Bartholomew Fair, chartered by Henry I in 1133 to fund the priory and suppressed in 1855, ran on the ground just north of here, and the Merchant Taylors processed to Cloth Fair each year to test cloth measures against their silver yard until 1854. The fair's Court of Pie Powder, the rough-and-ready tribunal for traders' disputes, sat at this pub; a depiction of 1811 puts it in the panelled ground-floor room rather than upstairs, as is usually said. The present building was rebuilt around 1850 with the interior remodelled in 1896, and it is on CAMRA's National Inventory. Grade II, though the pub's own sign says Grade I, and so does CAMRA, and both are wrong. Open weekdays only: it keeps market hours, not weekend ones.
The Boot and Flogger
10-20 Redcross Way SE1 1TA Nearest station: Borough
A boot and flogger is a tool, and the pub is the only place most people will ever hear the phrase. The boot is a leather sleeve that holds the bottle steady; the flogger is a wooden bat that drives the cork home. John Davy opened this as the first Davy's wine bar in 1965, not James Davy in 1964, as the story usually runs; James Davy is the firm's present-day wine buyer. It traded historically under the Vintners' Company's free-vintner privilege, granted by a charter of Elizabeth I in 1567, which allowed wine to be sold without a justices' licence and no beer or spirits at all. Davy's describes that arrangement in the past tense, so treat the wine-only rule as history, not as today's menu.
The Only Running Footman
5 Charles Street W1J 5DF Nearest station: Green Park
The full sign read I am the only Running Footman: twenty-four characters, and the longest pub name in London, though not in Britain. A running footman went ahead of his employer's carriage to clear the way, and Mayfair had enough of them, with the stable mews behind, to make this their house. The trade had gone by the middle of the nineteenth century and the name is the only thing left of it. First built in 1749 and rebuilt in the 1930s; before the footmen it was the Running Horse. It trades today as The Footman, which rather gives up the joke.
The Dog and Duck
18 Bateman Street W1D 3AJ Nearest station: Tottenham Court Road
From duck-baiting: a duck with clipped wings was put on a pond and dogs were set to catch it, and it survived as long as it could keep diving. The sport named a great many Dog and Duck taverns and was abolished in the nineteenth century. The listing for this one describes a mosaic and a plaque of a dog alarming a duck, so the origin is on the building, not in the folklore. The date usually given, 1718, belongs to nothing here: the present pub is of 1897, by Francis Chambers for the Cannon Brewery, and the pub's own account puts the first house on the site at 1734, on ground that had been the Duke of Monmouth's. Grade II, on CAMRA's National Inventory, with a small upstairs room named for George Orwell, who drank here.
The Fox and Anchor
115 Charterhouse Street EC1M 6AA Nearest station: Barbican
Nobody knows where the name came from, and the guesses are not worth repeating. The front is the reason to stand outside it. The listing dates the building to 1898 on its gable, gives the architect as Latham Augustus Withall and the builder as W. H. Lascelles and Company, and says the decorative panels, and perhaps most or all of the decorative front, were designed by W. J. Neatby and made by Doulton of Lambeth. Neatby is the man who did the Harrods food hall, and it shows: Art Nouveau terracotta and faience in buff and colour, over a Smithfield pub. Grade II.
The Old Bull and Bush
North End Way NW3 7HE Nearest station: Hampstead
A bull and a bush, and the bush is the older half: a bundle of greenery hung outside a house to advertise wine, which is the oldest tavern sign in England. The listing says it was reputedly built as a farm around 1645, licensed in 1721, and rebuilt with extensions in 1923 and 1924, so the building you see is the newest thing about it. Its real fame is musical: a music licence in 1867, and then Down at the Old Bull and Bush, the song Florrie Forde made a standard. Hogarth is associated with the garden. Grade II.
The Bleeding Heart
Bleeding Heart Yard, off Greville Street EC1 Nearest station: Farringdon
The best of them, because the gruesome explanation and the real one are both on record and only one is true. The yard is said to be where Lady Elizabeth Hatton was found torn apart with her heart still beating: a legend that gives the date as the 27th of January 1646 and is traceable to R. H. Barham’s Ingoldsby Legends of 1837, which was about a different Lady Hatton altogether, the wife of Sir Christopher, not Sir William. The Lady Elizabeth who did own a house nearby died of natural causes. The name is religious and much older: a sixteenth-century inn sign from the Reformation showing the heart of the Virgin Mary pierced by five swords. Dickens put the Plornish family here in Little Dorrit in 1857. The Bleeding Heart is now a restaurant and bistro across several buildings in the yard rather than a pub you drop into.
The Lamb and Flag
33 Rose Street WC2E 9EB Nearest station: Covent Garden
The lamb with the red-cross banner is the Agnus Dei, the Lamb of God carrying the flag of the Resurrection, a device that was Christian long before the cross of St George became the flag of England. Whether this house was named for it is not recorded, and the pub was something else entirely until recently: first licensed in 1772 as the Coopers Arms, and the Lamb and Flag only from 1833. It is often called the oldest pub in Covent Garden, which those dates do not support. The nickname worth knowing is the Bucket of Blood, from the bare-knuckle prize fights held upstairs in the early nineteenth century. Dryden was set upon in Lazenby Court alongside in 1679; who sent the men has never been established, whatever the plaques say. Grade II, the carcase around 1688 or early eighteenth century, the front rebuilt in 1958.
Questions
Which Underground stations are named after pubs?
Five directly: Angel, Elephant and Castle, Manor House, Royal Oak and Swiss Cottage. Maida Vale makes a sixth at one remove, because the station is named for the district and the district for a pub called the Hero of Maida. Three of those six namesake pubs no longer trade.
Which of these pubs are still open?
All seven on this page, checked in 2026. The one to plan around is the Hand and Shears, which opens on weekdays only and closes at weekends and on bank holidays, because it still keeps Smithfield's hours.
Is the Old Bull and Bush really a corruption of Boulogne Bouche?
No. Nothing connects the pub to Boulogne, and the history inside the story is wrong: Henry VIII took Boulogne on the 14th of September 1544, not in 1542, and England held it until March 1550, which is under six years rather than the eight the tale gives. A bull and a bush needs no explaining.
What is a boot and flogger?
A two-part tool for corking a bottle by hand. The boot is a leather sleeve that grips the bottle; the flogger is a short wooden bat that drives the cork in. The pub is named after it because the firm that opened the bar in 1965 was a wine merchant, and that is how a wine merchant closed a bottle.
What is the longest pub name in London?
I am the only Running Footman, at twenty-four characters, on Charles Street in Mayfair. It is the longest in London, not in Britain, and the house now trades under the shorter name The Footman.
Is the Elephant and Castle from the Cutlers' crest?
That is the usual explanation and it is at least plausible: the Cutlers' Company crest carries an elephant with a castle on its back, because cutlers worked in ivory. The competing story, that it is a corruption of Infanta de Castilla, has nothing behind it. Either way the station took its name from a coaching inn, not from the guild directly.
Elsewhere on this site: London oddities, secret bars.