Heritage Pubs
Convenor: Rosemary Palmer
Heritage Pub Group:
The sign that upset Victorian Lincoln!
This sign originally hung outside the Adam & Eve, but in 1894 Landlord Richard Harrison was made to remove it in the interest of public decency!
Do you know the story of future Irish President Eamon de Valera’s daring flight to freedom from Lincoln in 1919. De Valera was probably the most influential modern Irish statesman; he became Prime Minister and President of Ireland and served almost continually from 1932 to 1973.
De Valera was incarcerated in Lincoln prison with other Sinn Fein prisoners during the First World War, after the British authorities (wrongly) suspected his involvement in a German plot. His Sinn Fein colleagues outside prison, led by Michael Collins, helped to plan an escape, smuggling multiple keys into the prison via a variety of cakes.
At approximately 7.40pm on 3 February 1919, de Valera, Sean Milroy and a third man, Sean McGarry, opened the prison doors and escaped. They walked from the prison to the Adam and Eve pub, where they took a taxi to Worksop and then made their way back to Ireland.