The Old Inn in Crawfordsburn was a favourite haunt of C S Lewis. As young men he and Warnie would drink here and in later life he spent a belated honeymoon with his wide Joy in this little Inn.
Although Lewis never moved back to Northern Ireland he would make regular trips to his homeland and would often frequent this place, catching up with local intellectuals and taking in the County Down countryside and nearby Crawfordsburn Country Park.
Queen’s University is one of two universities present in Northern Ireland. Its location in the Queen’s Quarter is in the south of the city, close to the city centre and my childhood home.
It was at Queens that Flora Lewis, C S Lewis’s mother was one of the first women to graduate, with a first in psychics and mathematics. She also attended Methodist College just across from the university.
The library has a reading room dedicated to C S Lewis, that you enter through none other than a door which resembles a wardrobe.
It was on holidays along the North Coast, that C S Lewis first set eyes on Dunluce Castle. A formative ruin located on a island overlooking the Atlantic Ocean. This is the location that Lewis states as his inspiration for Cair Paravel in Narnia. Cair Paravel is the castle for Narnia’s rulers, and we are first introduced to it in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.
It is described as, ‘The castle of Cair Paravel on its little hill towered up above them; before them were the sands, with rocks and little pools of saltwater, and sea weed, and the smell of the sea, and long lines of bluish green waves breaking forever and ever on the beach. And oh, the cry of the sea-gulls! Have you heard it? Can you remember?’
However in the next book Prince Caspian, the castle is a ruin on an island where the great river of Narnia meets the ocean. This direct description fits with Dunluce Castle, once home to the Clans of Ulster. There is a local story told that one night during a storm, a banquet was held at the castle and that the storm was so fierce that the kitchen fell into the sea! This may just be an old legend though it was stories like this that would ignite a child’s imagination.
Dunluce Castle has influenced many others than just C S Lewis. Led Zepplin used a picture of the ruin inside their 1973 album, Houses of the Holy. In recent years it has been the prime location of filming for T.V. series Game of Thrones, where it is the House of Greyjoy.
Mussenden Temple lies in the grounds of Downhill Demense. A once majestic country estate belonging to the Earl of Bristol, Frederick Augustus Hervey. Frederick was also a Bishop and built this temple as a secret library, where he would meet with his lovers. There was a lot of controversy around this flamboyant Earl-Bishop, and he was often associated with scandal.
The Temple and house lies just outside the seaside town of Castlerock, another destination that the Lewis’s would go on their long summer holidays. In the early 1900’s Downhill Demense was still a residence, with the house falling into disrepair after the 1920’s. Its last use was as a an RAF site during World War Two, but since then it has been left to deteriorate, the once grand palace of the Bishop now lies in ruins.
It was summer holiday’s along this coast that ignited the young boy’s imaginations. Warnie and Lewis would often disappear into magical kingdoms. One such escape was animal-land and Boxen. C S Lewis has commented that these stories did not influence Narnia, but they did reflect the current politics of Ireland at that time with the Home Rule debate being fiercely debated across the island. They would create maps of this imaginary world, their characters took on many forms such as an artistic owl, a rabbit king and an aristocratic frog. Lewis stated that as a child through these stories he was, ‘training myself to be a novelist.’
The impressive estate has many interesting features, such as a lion’s gate, a mausoleum and a walled garden. It is hard to believe that such images did not have a lasting influence on Lewis’s imagination as a child.
The small town of Rostrevor is just south of the Mourne Mountains. It is a picturesque village which looks out onto Carlingford Lough and is surrounded by the nearby Kilbroney Forest. It was here that C S Lewis said, ‘That part of Rostrevor that looks over Carlingford Lough is my idea of Narnia.’
This location which is a short drive from the Mournes has embraced its routes with Lewis and has developed a Narnia Trail through the Kilbroney Forest. For information regarding this trail, its route and seasonal opening times refer to Discover Northern Ireland.
The Mourne Mountains in County Down are known for their majestic beauty. The area that they occupy is a designated preservation site. They are located near the seaside town of Newcastle, with their intimidating peaks shadowing the beaches. The highest is Slieve Donard, this peak is steeped in history and Irish folklore. On the summit there are two prehistoric Cairns which were long believed to be the entrance to the other world or as I was told as a child Tír na nÓg, the land of eternal beauty and youth. Such tales have been passed down from generation to generation and it is very possible that whilst climbing these mountains as a child the young Jack may have been captivated by the idea of such stones leading to another magical kingdom.
As young boys Jack and Warnie would be treated to yearly holidays by the sea. They would go for six weeks at a time, this was often the highlight of their year. Their father would never accompany them on such trips, instead staying in Belfast to work. They had the full attention of their mother and a rare opportunity to spend such close time with her. This would not have been the norm for families of their class at this time.
C S Lewis returned to the Mournes as a young man in 1915 for an Easter holiday and wrote a poem on the hills of down;
…Cold, snow pure wells
Sweet with the spring tide’s scent
Forsaken fells
That I only frequent-
And uplands bare
Would call for me above,
Were I not there
To roam the hills I love
For I alone
Have loved their loneliness:
None else hath known
Nor seen the goodliness
Of the green hills of Down
The soft low hills of Down.
In April 1917 Jack went to begin his first term in Oxford after receiving a scholarship, much against his father’s wishes he enlisted and found himself in the trenches of France on his nineteenth birthday. Warnie was already in the War at this time and had received the rank of Captain. Their father Albert was not supportive of the boy’s decision, having already lost his wife so young he was understandably fearful of losing his two sons. The boy’s relationship with their father was strained and never fully recovered. After the war Jack returned back to Oxford and finished his studies in English obtaining a first in 1923. He continued to live in England working at Oxford University, whilst Warnie pursued a career in the military.
In the summer of 1929 Jack received a telegram telling him his father had taken ill. It was decided he should attend the Royal Victoria Hospital in Belfast, where the worst was confirmed; Albert had cancer. Jack nursed his father in Little Lea until September when he returned again to England after doctors determined his father still could live a couple more years. He arrived in Oxford only to receive a telegram telling him to return home at once as his father had taken a turn for the worst. Jack rushed back to Ireland but was too late, Albert Lewis had already passed away. Jack had to tell Warnie who was serving in Shanghai what had happened and then arrange his father’s funeral. Now both his parents had passed it was to be the end of his beloved childhood home in Little Lea, Lewis stated, ‘The house had been well suffered in.’
Warnie did not take the news well and would spend the rest of his life battling alcoholism. In a letter from his father whilst Warnie was in the trenches Albert had urged his son, ‘Have little or nothing to do with vin- either ordinaire or peculiar.’ Perhaps predicting his son’s illness, however Warnie did go on to have a successful life, writing seven books on seventeenth and eighteenth century France.
Albert’s death marked a turning point in C S Lewis’s life and also challenged him to
re-examine his own battle with his Christian faith.
The Searcher is a statue dedicated to Lewis which was unveiled in 1998, marking the centenary of his birth. I have fond memories as a child playing around this piece after attending story time at the library and tucking into some crab claws from the local fishmonger. It was designed by Ross Wilson and depicts a man peering into a wardrobe, some believe it is Lewis himself, others say it is his old headmaster W T Kirkpatrick and represents his struggle of faith, with Narnia being a metaphor for spirituality and the beyond. The statue is infront of the Holywood Arches Library and is popular with children and tourists alike.
Belfast in 1998 was slowly stepping towards a peaceful resolution with the Good Friday Agreement being signed on April 10th. The future of the city that had become unrecognisable from Lewis’s days was slowly being forged. It wasn’t really until 1998 that Lewis started to be commemorated as an Irish artist, with his heritage often lost and wrongly assigned to England. It was probably his Anglo Irish background and his education in England that meant there was a hesitatation in claiming his Irish upbringing. Lewis would continue to come back to his native home, even honeymooning with his wife Joy in his and Warnie’s favourite old haunt the Old Crawfordsburn Inn. However his connection to his homeland was often in contrast with it’s reality, the Ireland he had known was gone but instead lived on in his childhood memories and in the stories he told.
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.
St. Mark’s church still stands today in the Dundela area of East Belfast. It was established in 1874 and has close links with the Lewis family. C S Lewis’s maternal grandfather the Reverend Thomas Hamilton was the first rector here from 1878-1905. It was in this church that C S Lewis was baptised by his grandfather in 1899 and also later took confirmation.
Jack and Warnie came back to St. Marks in 1935 to dedicate a stained glass window to their parents. The Latin inscription translates as;
‘To the greater glory of God and dedicated to the memory of Albert James Lewis, who died on the 25th September 1929, aged 67, and also of his wife, Flora Augusta Hamilton, who died on the 23rd August 1908, aged 47.’
On the south side of the chapel there is also a window dedicated to Rev. Thomas Hamilton.
In later life C S Lewis would come back to Christianity, with many of his later books taking on Christian themes. As a young boy he would attend this church every Sunday under the watchful gaze of his grandfather. It really was quite the family affair, with the church lectern being presented by his cousins the Ewarts. They would often go to the Ewart’s house after Sunday service with Lewis commenting in his biography Surprised by Joy that it was his cousin Mary who, ‘took upon herself the heroic work of civilising my brother and me’.
In 1905 the family moved out of Dundela Avenue and into their newly built home named Little Lea. The family had decided to build this grand house in the affluent suburbs of Belmont motivated by the health of their two children. Belfast in the early 1900’s was a city full of smog, a report in 1906 found that the chance of developing tuberculous was almost double than that of England or Wales with Belfast also having the highest rate of typhoid in the United Kingdom at this time.
It was at this happy home that Lewis declared himself Jack, and it was this name that his family would refer to him as. Jack and his older brother, Warnie were inseparable. Their father was often prone to moodiness and Lewis would blame this in later years on his Celtic temperament.
This was a turbulent time in Irish history with the home rule debate being one that was often discussed at the dinner table with his grandmother Mary Hamilton being pro home rule, and his grandfather the rector at St Mark’s Church of Ireland being a staunch Unionist who was against it.
Against the political backdrop bubbling in Belfast, this was a happy home that Jack and Warnie talked of with fondness. This idyllic childhood was to shatter all around them in 1908 when his mother Florence died from bowel cancer. Her death affected the boys deeply, with Albert never fully recovering from the loss of his wife at such an early age.
The boys had enjoyed a close relationship with their mother, even though they had, had servants, their long seaside holidays with her and moments at Little Lea were cherished. On talking about losing his mother in later life Lewis stated, ‘no one told me that grief felt so like fear.’
Only two weeks after their mother’s death Jack was sent to join Warnie at a boarding school in Watford, England. This had a profound affect on the young boy who had just lost his mother and now had lost his beloved home. As an adult Lewis remarks in his autobiography Surprised by Joy that,
‘With my mother’s death all settled, happiness, all that was tranquil and reliable, disappeared from my life. There was to be much fun, many pleasures, many stabs of joy; but no more of the old security. It was sea and islands now; the great continent had sunk like Atlantis.’
It was this longing for home that cemented the memories in his mind. The rolling hills of Down and the green fields of Antrim would stay with C S Lewis, in his imagination. It was these fond memories of the Ireland he had known until 1908 that never left him even when that Ireland changed forever in 1921.
C S Lewis's Ireland 