“I am sometimes asked what it is like living in the shadow of such a great man – and I always point out that Jack did not leave a shadow behind him but a glow…
Jack left us the wonderful land of Narnia, the land of Aslan and Tumnus, of the White Witch, of unicorns and dragons, high adventure and endless joy. He left us Glome – that dark and dreadful city, and in showing us the way out of it he taught us all to lift our veils. Jack left us Malacrandia and Perelandra, and showed us the dangers and the joys that lie in wait for us in such places of the soul.
More than that he faced the darkness that he found in this world and lit for us bright lamps to show us the path that all of us need to find. You will find them in the shelves of any good bookstore or library – just look for the name of C.S. Lewis.”
Douglas Gresham
“Jack’s Life: The Life and Story of C.S. Lewis” 2005
Oxford and Cambridge don C. S. “Jack” Lewis (1898 – 1963) has been called the “greatest Christian writer in the English language” – opening the door of faith to millions of readers. His words on Christian apologetics are indeed ones of “global ministry” – and have been translated into most languages spoken in our world.
Lewis’ parish church of Trinity (which now houses a Narnia window), where he attended worship nearly every week of his adult life and on whose grounds he and Warnie are buried. Oxford University, where he taught for twenty years, is the site of Magdalene College. Nearby are Aden’s Walk, the Eagle and Child Pub (where he often drank with close friend J. R. R. Tolkien), and the Eastgate Hotel where he met his future wife Joy Davidman for the first time – as well as her burial site in the Oxford Crematorium, Headington.
“The Kilns” gardens and pond – now preserved by the National Trust. The house is located in what is now called Lewis Close, south of Kiln Lane, taking up the remaining of what was in Lewis’ day a substantial property.
The Kilns, also known as the C. S. Lewis House, is a house in England’s Oxford suburb of Risinghurst, where the author wrote his “Chronicle of Narnia” series and other classics.
The Kilns was built in 1922 on the site of a former clay works for bricks. The lake in the garden is a flooded clay pit on the shores of which Lewis’s brother Warnie built an Oriental Garden. In 1930, The Kilns was bought by C. S. Lewis, and it became home for himself, his brother Major Warren Lewis, and Mrs. Jane Moore. Janie Moore was the mother of Lewis’s university friend Paddy Moore, who had been killed in the First World War in which Lewis also served and was injured.
The Kilns was restored in the mid 2000’s (see poem below) – and is currently owned and administered by the C.S. Lewis Foundation, which operates it as the Study Centre at the Kilns for students majoring in English Literature graduate studies at Oxford University. Paul spent a semester at Trinity College, Oxford in 1986 and had the privilege of staying at The Kilns for a seminar in 2007 – when he took these photographs.
Lewis’ library (a modern conversion of the Mews), study and desk, as well as a later bronze of a beloved mythic lion under a picture of his “creator”. The radio is of a type used during the Second World War, when Lewis’ voice of calm on the BBC frequently aired – said to be recognized second-only to Winston Churchill’s.
Working at the Kilns
“The noise and fury of twenty hands rebuilding the house around me never intruded on my thoughts as I set to do the work before me.
Ripping up the rotten floor and cutting new parquet to match the old in Joy’s room. Cutting out the boards by hand and nailing them together to match the bookcase in the picture of Mrs. Moore’s room; Tearing brick and mortar apart with a miniature jackhammer to open up the fireplace in Jack’s bedroom; Scraping the ladder on the quarry tile floor and nailing into the ceiling to hang a towel rack above the Aga in Mrs. Miller’s kitchen.
My pen move steadily across the paper while I sat at the dining room table until I finished my chapter, looked up, and thought, “Jack wrote here.” “
Harry Lee Poe
“C.S Lewis Remembered” – 2006