Campbell College is a boys school in East Belfast. It was here that C S Lewis studied in 1910, after his private boarding school in England closed due to its erratic principal, Capron. Jack and Warnie often wrote home to their father pleading with him to remove them from the English boarding school where Capron would often blame any mistakes made on them being Irishmen. In a letter to Albert Lewis, Warnie explained, ‘I ask you what I asked before, to let us leave at once, I have stood this sort of thing for three years and I cannot stand it any longer.’ Warnie got his wish and in 1909 was moved to Malvern College another boy’s boarding school in Worcestershire. Jack had to spend another year alone at the school before finally being brought home in 1910 and being sent to Campbell College, not too far from his beloved Little Lea.
The headmaster of Campbell College was a close friend of the family, James Adams McNeil. Jack was delighted to be returning home, even if he did attend as a boarder, he could spend every Sunday at home in Little Lea.
It is here in Campbell College that Lewis says he got the inspiration behind the Lucy’s lamp post in The Lion The Witch and The Wardrobe.
The happiness did not last however, as during his first term back Jack got ill. This sparked the end of his education in Ireland, as after Christmas his father sent him back to England to attend a preparatory near Warnie.
The following year Ireland was on the brink. The Home Rule movement had been gathering pace and the Anti-Home Rule movement had been gaining strength with the signing of the Ulster Covenant in September 1912. This Covenant vowed to defend Ireland against the introduction of Home Rule, with some people even signing it in their blood. The boy’s father Albert wrote to them to explain why he had decided against signing this Covenant. The Ireland that C S Lewis had known was changing fast and all he could do as a young boy was watch from across the water.
C S Lewis's Ireland 