The Plough

Today I was in Nottingham for a meeting and afterwards we went for a meal at this pub.

There are a lot of pubs in England called The Plough, many of them very old, and I wondered why so many of them would have the same name. So, later on, I did a bit of research* and found out that when many people couldn't read, pub owners would put common objects - or pictures of them - outside of their premises. And in the countryside a plough was one of the items that was commonly used.

Interestingly, some artists chose to represent the plough as the constellation of the same name, leading to some pubs being called The Seven Stars.

*looked on Wikipedia