C.S. Lewis and Headington
Clive Staples Lewis (1898–1963) had associations with Headington from June 1921 and was to make it his permanent home from 1929 until his death in 1963. Even after he moved from Magdalen College, Oxford to become a fellow of Magdalene College in Cambridge, he regularly returned by train to Headington for weekends and vacations.
Mrs Janie Moore (née Askins), who was separated from her husband, moved to Oxford with her daughter Maureen in order to be with Lewis in the autumn of 1918. Born in Ireland in 1872, she was known as Minto and was 26 years older than Lewis and the mother of a comrade of Lewis who had been killed in the war. She and Maureen first lived in Warneford Road, and after several other short lets moved to "Uplands" at 54 Windmill Road in June 1921.
Lewis visited Minto frequently after her move to Oxford, and regarded her as his adopted mother, but scholars have suggested that there was more to the relationship than this.
In 1923, Mrs Moore and her daughter moved to "Hillsboro" in Holyoake Road (left). The name of the house is still engraved over the downstairs window.
The address of the house was then 2 Western Road, but its current address is 14 Holyoake Road. The first Kelly's Directory listing Mrs Moore at this house is the 1928 edition.
Lewis’s brother Major Warren Lewis (known as Warnie) originally would have nothing to do with Janie Moore; but in 1929 their father died, and Lewis persuaded Warnie to buy "The Kilns" with him and Janie, and IN 1930 Lewis moved in openly with her and her daughter. The ownership of the house was put in Mrs Moore’s name, although the Askins estate had borne less than half the cost, with Lewis and his brother Warnie paying the rest. When Warnie retired in 1932, he also came to live with them, and Alice Hamilton Moore (no relation, but an old friend of Mrs Moore’s from Ireland) also lived there. The extensive grounds of this house, which was then deep in the country, provided the inspiration for the Chronicles of Narnia, which started off as a tale told to children evacuated there from London in 1939. The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe was published nine years later in 1948.
Lewis was famously converted to Christianity on the bus up to visit Janie Moore in Headington in 1929:
The odd thing was that before God closed in on me, I was in fact offered what now appears to be a moment of wholly free choice. I was going up Headington Hill on the top of a bus. Without words, and almost without images, a fact about myself was somehow presented to me. I became aware that I was holding something at bay. I felt myself being given a free choice. I could open the door or keep it shut. I chose to open.
Lewis attended Holy Trinity Church in Headington Quarry with his brother and first preached there on 29 March 1942 on the subject "Religion and pleasure". Warnie was Churchwarden there from 1953 to 1956. The brothers always sat in the same pew in Holy Trinity Church, Headington Quarry beside the pillar to St George. The Narnia window (left), designed and made by Sally Scott, was installed beside this pew in 1991.
On the left, the window depicts Aslan the Lion as the sun, with the word NARNIA in the rays of light coming from his mane.
On the right are the flying horse, the castle Cair Paravel, and a talking tree
Mrs Moore’s friend Alice Hamilton Moore died at the age of 85 and was buried at Holy Trinity Church on 6 November 1939. Mrs Moore herself died on 12 January 1951 and was buried in the same grave. Lewis accepted the Chair of Mediaeval and Renaissance Literature at the University of Cambridge that year, but continued to keep "The Kilns" as his home.
In 1952 Lewis met Mrs Joy Gresham (née Davidman), and their story is famously told in the film Shadowlands.
Joy was an American who had been deserted by her husband. Lewis helped her to arrange the rental of 10 Old High Street, Headington (right) for herself and her two boys, and she moved in during August 1953.
The house (opposite the present Somerfield) has a plaque over the downstairs window reading: "The former home of the writer Joy Davidman, wife of C. S. Lewis".
Joy’s son Douglas Gresham was about eight years old when he moved into Old High Street in 1953. He said of the house: "It was a nice place partly because of the visitors who came, many of Oxford’s literary luminaries. Lewis himself of course, his brother Warnie, and J.R.R. Tolkien."
Joy divorced her husband in August 1954 and married Lewis in Oxford Register Office on 23 April 1956. This was a marriage of convenience so that she could acquire British citizenship, and she continued to live in Old High Street after the marriage.
In 1957 Joy was admitted to the Wingfield Morris Orthopaedic Hospital (now the Nuffield Orthopaedic Centre) with a broken leg, and was found to have cancer.
The Revd Peter Bide married Lewis and Joy a second time at this hospital (this time with a real Christian ceremony) on 21 March 1957: the marriage took place in the Mayfair Suite (right). The next month Joy moved into "The Kilns" with Lewis.
Joy died on 13 July 1960. At her request, her funeral was held at Oxford Crematorium, and her ashes were scattered in its garden, and Lewis had a plaque (left) put up there in her memory. It reads:
Remember
HELEN JOY
DAVIDMAN
D. July 1960
Loved wife of C.S. LEWIS
Here the whole world (stars, water, air,
And field, and forest, as they were
Reflected in a single mind)
Like cast off clothes was left behind
In ashes, yet with hope that she,
Re-born from holy poverty,
In lenten lands, hereafter may
Resume them on her Easter day
During his final illness Lewis was visited twice a week by Father Head of Holy Trinity to administer communion, and he died at "The Kilns" on 22 November 1963. He was buried at Holy Trinity Church. His brother Warnie remained in the house until his death in April 1973. and was buried with his brother.
Mary Rogers gives two vignettes of Lewis in Headington in her article "C.S. Lewis — God’s Fool" in Oxford (the Journal of the Oxford Society) for November 1998:
"Jack never minded looking a fool in a good cause. My sister-in-law tells me that he used to attend an annual party in Headington where guests were expected to arrive, not exactly in fancy dress, but to suggest some topic the hostess had decided upon. After Jack’s marriage to Joy, he brought her along, obviously much to her disgust. She had chosen not to represent some character in Poetry or Opera.... Lewis (of course) represented Wotan, wearing a black eye-shade over one eye — without embarrassment.
"Another Lewis-the-fool story involved an elderly dog. Both brothers were animal lovers, and cared for each dog lovingly to his last breath. One, in its extreme old age (probably Baron or Mr Papworth, also known as "Tykes") became very difficult, as we all do, in time. It was one of the rare sights of Headington to see Jack feeding an animal who was sensitive about being seen eating, and would not eat on home territory. So Jack would walk in front holding the dog dish in one hand, and a spoon in the other, ladling the food backwards over his shoulder to the following shambling dog, the leader being quite unmindful of the passersby and their reactions, as long as the dog got fed."
Pictures of The Kilns, and how to get there
You Tube: Memories of C. S. Lewis in Headington
Note that there is a much fuller entry on C. S. Lewis in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
Wikipedia: Clive Staples Lewis