On the corner of St Johns Road and Lodge Street — Forest Lodge if you are precise, Glebe if you are giving a cabbie directions — the Nag’s Head is the suburb’s first pub under a later name. Dictionary of Sydney dates the opening to about 1865 as the Old Forest Lodge Hotel, with publican-butcher John George Tucker behind the bar (and the meat trade).
In 1885 it became the Town Hall Hotel, a plain nod to Ambrose Thornley’s Glebe Town Hall a few doors away (opened 1880). That name stuck through the Tooth & Co decades until 1973, when the house was rebadged Nag’s Head. Later years added the balcony locals now treat as original and pushed the footprint into the neighbouring terrace that once sold pizza — useful colour, not 1860s fabric.
Do not invent a cute origin story for Nag’s Head.” English pub names travel; this one arrived by rebrand, not by a documented local horse legend. What matters is the name ladder — Old Forest Lodge → Town Hall → Nag’s Head and the fact that Forest Lodge’s first public house is still pouring on the same corner.