On what street was the Duck and Drake Inn located near?

The Duck and Drake Inn stood just off the Strand in London. The Strand was a fashionable riverside district linking the City of London with Westminster, making it a plausible meeting place for Thomas Wintour, who commonly stayed there while in London.

On 20 May 1604, Wintour met Robert Catesby, John Wright, Guy Fawkes and Thomas Percy at the inn. In a private room, the five men swore an oath to keep their conspiracy secret. Their plan eventually became the Gunpowder Plot: blowing up the House of Lords during the State Opening of Parliament and replacing the Protestant government with a Catholic regime.

A common mix-up is to confuse the Strand meeting place with the later location beneath Parliament. The Duck and Drake was associated with the conspirators’ first major planning meeting; Fawkes was arrested months later in a cellar beneath the House of Lords. The Strand itself was not the attack site.

The exact wording in historical accounts is usually “at an inn called the Duck and Drake, just off the Strand” or “in the Strand district.” Thus The Strand is the canonical location answer for this question.