The pub name "Eagle & Child", popped up in the Oxford pubs thread and there are many similarly named around the country.
Here in Buxton, there's an 18th century "Eagle & Child" pub. It was re-built by one of the Dukes of Devonshire on the site of an earlier 14th century market tavern and sometime in the early 19th century the name became The Eagle. We now hold live acoustic music events there.
Does anyone know the origins of the name "Eagle & Child"?
CR
It is a heraldic reference as many pub names are. According to the research of the late Glenn Worth, it dates back to circa 1355 and a popular tale of the time. Hearing a baby's cry in an eagle's eyrie at Latham Hall, Ormskirk, searchers found an unknown healthy boy. The boy was adopted by Sir Thomas Latham, given the name Oskatel and made male heir to his fortune. Shortly after, the eagle and child became the family crest. Later, Sir Thomas confessed that the whole thing had been arranged to conceal that the child had been born out of wedlock, the result of a fling with a Mary Oskatel. He left the Latham estate to his daughter, Lady Isabel. She in turn, married Sir John Stanley and the estate passed to the Stanley family-Earls of Derby. They in acknowledgment assumed the Latham crest-the eagle and child.
Alex20/8/03 8:50 PM
(great stuff snipped)
Thanks Alex, that's really useful..
Aint usenet wonderful!
CR
Just to add to that, it may also originate from the legend of Ganymede, a shepherd boy that was abducted by Zeus in the form of an Eagle to become cupbearer of the Gods. The story gets a little more Greek than that, but you have the gist of it. Ganymede and the Eagle were immortalised in the Heavens in the constellations Aquarius and Aquilla.
The Eagle and Child (or at least its sign) in Oxford apparently provided the inspiration for part of Tolkien's "The Hobbit", where Bilbo Baggins and his Dwarf friends are carried away from the goblins by giant eagles.
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