If you wish, you may take a detour down Merton Lane to Merton College. If you do, be sure to come back to this point to resume your tour.

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Founded in 1264, Merton College is one of Oxford’s oldest and most distinguished colleges. During the 1940s, it was home to J.R.R. Tolkien, Professor of English Language and Literature and one of C.S. Lewis’s closest friends.

While Lewis lectured and tutored at nearby Magdalen, Tolkien’s rooms here became a second base for the Inklings, the informal literary group that included Hugo Dyson, Charles Williams, and others.

The pair often walked together between Magdalen and Merton, discussing theology, myth, and the craft of storytelling.

It was in these conversations that early drafts of The Lord of the Rings and The Chronicles of Narnia were first shared aloud.

The two men had their disagreements — particularly over the direction of fantasy and allegory — but their mutual respect endured. Lewis’s conversion to Christianity owed much to Tolkien’s patient friendship, and Tolkien later said that without Lewis’s encouragement, The Lord of the Rings might never have been finished.

Visitors today can admire Merton’s tranquil Mob Quad, the oldest collegiate quadrangle in Oxford, and glimpse the tower and gardens where Tolkien sometimes wrote and strolled.

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