The Eagle and Child

The Eagle and Child is a pub in St Giles’, Oxford, known locally as the Bird and Baby. It stands on a busy corner in north Oxford, its brick walls and small-paned windows giving it the look of a 17th-century coaching inn. The pub’s name and its long-standing nickname both come from old stories about eagles and children. University College owned the building for centuries before selling it in the early 21st century. St John’s College later bought it and still holds the freehold today. The building is listed Grade II, protecting its historic character. Plans now aim to restore the pub while adding hotel rooms above. The pub is famous as the lunchtime meeting place of the Inklings, a writers’ group that included J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis. From the early 1930s they gathered in a private back room called the Rabbit Room on Monday or Tuesday afternoons. These sessions helped shape works such as The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. The group also met on Thursday evenings at Magdalen College, where Lewis read aloud from unfinished manuscripts. After modernisation in 1962 the Rabbit Room lost its privacy and the group moved to the Lamb and Flag. Colin Dexter’s Inspector Morse stories later featured the pub’s wooden plaque to the Inklings. Inside, the ground floor still holds the original bar and seating areas with low beams and worn floorboards. The Rabbit Room, though altered, keeps its name and some of its former atmosphere. A planned refurbishment will add a restaurant behind the pub while keeping the front unchanged. The upper floors will become hotel rooms and meeting spaces, preserving the building’s outward appearance. Visitors can still sense the literary history when they stand where Tolkien and Lewis once talked over pints. The street outside remains a busy route, linking the pub to the colleges and the city centre.