What inspired C.S. Lewis for his Narnia tales? I looked around Oxford recently for an answer to that question, and I found this odd lamppost.

Lewis would have passed it regularly as he left the faculty gate at Magdalen College, where he worked. It seems definitely out of place, in this walkway not on a street. And, it looks like the one in Narnia, according to the first illustrations.

Nearby is a pair of fauns. No, really. They’re holding up a little porch roof, and they’re painted gold. He would have passed these as well. Fauns, lampposts: they go together, right?

Lewis had offices in Magdalen College where he tutored students in English literature. Strangely, no one knows which office was his! But outside of one of them as it faces a quadrangle is a fanciful gargoyle:

Don’t you think he looks like a little Narnia animal begging for help?

I saw Lewis’s house, the desk where he wrote, his garden, his church, and his grave. I also attended Evensong at Magdalen College, which was so, so moving. I was thrilled to be walking in his footsteps, seeing what he saw.

I do have to tell you about Addison’s Walk. This is a pathway along the River Cherwell, on an island accessible as part of Magdalen College. It’s where C.S. Lewis loved to walk. One day in 1931, he walked there with his friends J.R.R. Tolkien and Hugo Dyson. When he started out, he was an atheist. But by the time they returned, his heart had changed. He knew there was a God. Just a couple of weeks later, he’d become a Christian.

Of course I had to find Addison’s Walk.

Sure enough, it was a beautiful shady lane. A great place to meet God.