Why are they called Arms?

So, here is the thing. While on my way out and about in London especially in the North West parts, this is what I had observed and since my friend-cum-guide doesn’t know about it and since I couldn’t find a reasonable explanation about it either, I had to blog about it to get some answers if any one of you know about these.

I saw three pubs and there is a pattern to them.

a) They are in the corner or junction of two roads.

b) Their names end with Arms

c) They are black in color

d) They have names which resemble the names of dukes probably.

Here are those

(i) Devonshire Arms

(ii) Oxford Arms

(iii) Lyttleton Arms

Some say they are named thus because they were earlier almhouses close by which were supported by those families and later they changed the names to arms instead of alms and such. Of course not all of them agree to this and there is no definite explanation as such when I tried googling about them.

In case you know of their history or any other such ‘Arms’ based pub names, please do let me know 🙂