Turn right into Cornmarket Street and walk past all the shops until you come to Broad Street. Ahead of you and on your right you will see St. Mary Magdalen’s Church. Lewis used to frequent this church for confession.

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St. Mary Magdalen’s Church, dating back to the 12th century, is one of Oxford’s oldest active parish churches.
Though often overlooked by tourists, it played a quiet but profound role in C.S. Lewis’s spiritual life.

After his conversion to Christianity in 1931, Lewis made it a practice to attend private confession here — a sign of humility that surprised even his closest friends.

He once admitted to being nervous about it, describing it as “a deepening of my own repentance, a cleansing of the inner life.”

The rector at the time, Father Walter Adams, became one of Lewis’s spiritual advisors, offering gentle wisdom and discretion.

Lewis later wrote that confession, while uncomfortable, “is like the refreshing of a parched soul — terrible beforehand, but peace afterwards.”

This little church embodies that spirit: ancient, unassuming, and full of quiet grace. It reminds visitors that faith, for Lewis, was never an abstraction but a lived practice — one that required honesty, humility, and courage.

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