Crooked Billet - they used to hang one outside an inn to show it was a placed you could get a drink , the same way they stick the red and white sign outside the barber shop (symbolic of a bandaged arm from thye s=days they doubled as surgeons, since they had the razors and scissors handy.) Quite why, I haven't a clue, but it was widespread enough that you get a fair number of Crooked Billets in all sorts of places. One in Walthamstow which has given its name to a little area, not just a pub.

Oldest pub in existence is said to be the Trip to Jerusalem in Nottingham.

And maybe the fashion for jokey pub names for pubs in chains has peaked. There used to be a great pub in Epping near us called the George and Dragon, we used to have sessions there, and then it got gutted and reopened as the Forest and Firkin (or some Firkin name). But now it's been redesigned again, and it's gone back to being the George and Dragon. Still a horrible pub, but maybe in time it'll recover. At least now it's not so annoying as you walk past it to go somewhere else.