Continue along Queen’s Lane, noticing how quiet it becomes. On your right is New College. On your left is The Queen’s College and then All Soul’s College. You will pass under a bridge which is where Queen’s Lane becomes New College Lane.

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Queen’s Lane feels like a hidden world between worlds — connecting the bustle of the High Street with the serene cloisters of Oxford’s oldest colleges.

C.S. Lewis often walked here between tutorials or to clear his mind before a lecture. Its narrowness and echoing footsteps evoke the quiet introspection that shaped much of his writing.

The lane’s enduring calm provided a striking contrast to wartime Oxford, when air-raid sirens occasionally broke the silence. Yet, as Lewis wrote in his essay Learning in War-Time, “Human culture has always had to live under the shadow of something infinitely more important than itself.”

Walking here, you experience the stillness that Lewis prized — a space where contemplation, history, and imagination coexist.

Many visitors note how the walls seem to breathe with age; perhaps it’s not hard to picture Lewis, head bowed in thought, reciting a fragment of Milton or Dante as he strolled this way toward New College.

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