The Bag O' Nails

On Thursday 26th March 2026 two very good friends of mine and I had a “chaps” walk in London in the footsteps of Ian Fleming and his iconic hero, James Bond.

Our first stop en route was at a pub directly across the road from the south-east corner of the grounds of Buckingham Palace called the “Bag O Nails”. While I was researching the walk I found out that back in the 1960’ the Bag O Nails was where the Rolling Stones, Kinks, The Who and many other foundational icons of the British rock n roll scene had performed early in their careers. I told my two friends before we went in. They accepted my knowledge in good faith.

We crossed the threshold and settled down for a coffee. I looked around and took in my surroundings. The bar area was not much bigger than a tennis court. It was hard to imagine Mick Jagger strutting his stuff to “Honky Tonk Women” in such a small space with the rest of the band and an audience. I know Keith Richards has said that Mick Jagger could perform within a space no bigger than a coffee table but this looked to be an impossibly small setting for a full show.

Oh well, that’s showbiz.

According to the sign outside the pub there has been an inn selling alcohol on the site since 1775. It’s address then would have been “Chelsea Road” which linked Chelsea to the then Buckingham House. It is very hard to imagine what that road was like all those years ago when, nowadays double decker buses, taxis, Deliveroo’s and commercial traffic pounding the tarmac today when it was once notorious for being the haunt of highway men.

In homage to the Regency development of Buckingham House and converting it into a palace the road name was changed to what we know today, Buckingham Palace Road.

The present building dates back to 1820 and was part of a program of development by the Grosvenor Belgravia Estate. The new building was leased to Matthew Cotts Wyatt and John Howell. They were both involved in the development of the area and were granted a lease for the premises at fifty pounds per annum. If they were able to rock up of a lunchtime in 2026 with that amount in cash, as they wouldn’t be carrying bank cards, they could have afforded a couple of main courses and maybe a half bottle of house red. Allowing for inflation over two centuries that amount would be worth approximately eleven hundred pounds. Methinks they got a pretty good deal on the lease.

As for the name, which I thought was unique, there are two pubnaming streams of thought.

There is a story that the name is Cockney rhyming slang for “Bacchanalia”, the ancient and louche activities of drinking and dancing to excess.. How likely is that thought? Cockneys, by definition, have to be born within the sound of Bow Bells nearly nine miles away eastwards across London. Would a Cockney risk wandering that far from his “manor”, find a pub near Buckingham House and dream up some rhyming slang that would become common usage and remain as a name with it for a few years?

The other possibility is that the original pub sign at some distant past had a sign depicting a satyr accompanied by a pack of happy dogs. In Greek mythology a satyr is a man with a horse’s head, ears and tail. The Romans believed they were a man with goat’s ears, tail and cloven hooves. The devil incarnate. The happy dogs were called bacchanals. Put the two together and with some linguistic evolution the name became “Devil and the Bacchanails” to the “Bag O’ Nails” in 1905 when the devil was dropped.

Greatly refreshed, warmed and toileted, which is what men of a certain age need, we continued our walk in the steps of Ian Fleming and James Bond. Our destination was 16 Victoria Square where Ian Fleming lived from 1953 until his death in 1964. It was from this home that he wrote one James Bond book a year from Casino Royale (1953) to The Spy Who Loved me (1963) shortly before he died. There is no blue plaque attached to the wall of the house to commemorate his time within its walls.

As far as the pub’s connection with the very early years of the rock n roll revolution I am afraid I rather misled them. Not with malice aforethought of course. When I was researching for this piece after our walk I found out that there is a venue in Kingly Street in Soho also called “The Bag O Nails”. That is where those early icons of 1960’s rock n roll performed.

“Mea culpa gentlemen.”