Lamb & Flag, Oxford

Venerable pub, with an light oak-panelled front room accessed from the side alleyway. The bar and another couple of smaller rooms can be found further back in (presumably older, and plainly furnished) parts of the building under low ceilings. A good selection of mostly local cask beers from the likes Oxford Brewery (Shotover Prospect, £4.50), Tap Social, XT and North Cotswold from six of the eight handpumps, together with a couple of draught ciders.

The Lamb & Flag has a rectangular front seating area with wood paneling and a few coat of arms for a splash of colour. A piano resides on a raised area across the left-hand wall, I didn’t see any live events advertised. The bar area is found towards the rear where a bar counter runs up the left, and to the right is a tiny cubby hole with a table, stool and lamp that must depict something. At the rear is a old exposed stone fireplace and to the left behind the bar counter is a raised seating area, looks a good spot to tuck into the advertised sausage rolls and scotch eggs from the Lamb & Flag Larder. The gents toilet at the rear has a baby changing facility, great to see. There is also a sanitary bin shoehorned down the side of the cubicles, not so great. The bar supports two banks of four hand pumps that are split by 12 craft keg fonts. The cask available during my midweek evening visit was Little Ox Brew Co’s Ox Blood, XT Brewing’s Hop Kitty and Inklings Amber, Oxford Brewery’s Prospect, North Cotswold Brewery’s Freedom, Cotswold Cider Co’s Muscle Mary and Yellow Hammer and Carnival Cider. A real mix of cask ale and cider. I found the service to be polite, and the pub was decent enough, if maybe a little sparse of furnishings.