The C. S. Lewis Tour

Wow! summarizing Ron or the tour he gives is hard.
Ron greeted us at the start of the tour and set about learning all of our names. He seemed a very amiable sort of chap. We started off by getting the history (and pre-history) of the tour. This part of the tour never really ended. Throughout the day we continued to get filled in on the various difficulties he and the tour have faced over the years. Some very interesting and informative historical anecdotes centered around Ron’s childhood experiences with C. S. Lewis’ step son Doug Gresham. Ron clearly had a childhood connection with Lewis, and particularly with Lewis’ property.

The first stop on the tour was the Eagle and Child (Bird and Baby) pub where the Inklings (Lewis, Tolkien, Owen Barfield, Charles Williams, etc) met. Next we stopped at the college where C. S. Lewis had trained after enlisting for WWI. Across the way where castings of dinosaur tracks laid across a lawn.

Next we went past Lewis’ first residence in Oxford en route to Magdalen College where Lewis was granted a Fellowship teaching English Literature. Right next door was Magdalen College School, the school attended by Lewis’ step sons.

Heading out to Headington we saw Tolkien’s old home, Joy Gresham’s first house in the Oxford area, the hospital where Joy died, and a shark.

Also in Headington was Holy Trinity church. There we saw the pew where the Lewis brothers sat, the plot where they were buried, the signatures of Third Day in the guest book, and the grave of Janie King Moore (the mother of Lewis’ close friend during the war; Lewis cared for her until her death).

We wrapped up our tour by checking out the outside of the Kilns (the Lewis home) and the reserve that used to be Lewis backyard. The little woodland, with the little pond was very peaceful.

While retrieving our vehicles after the tour we saw two tractors driving up the street in Oxford. Amazing!