THE NEW BUILDING, ADDISON’S WALK & DEER PARK

Once inside Magdalen College, walk through the Cloisters and cross into the grassy quad of the New Building (constructed in the 18th century).
Look up to the second floor — the two windows just right of the centre belong to C.S. Lewis’s old rooms.
Then, follow the signs through the arch to Addison’s Walk, a tree-lined path circling the Deer Park.
Take your time — this was one of Lewis’s favourite places for thought and companionship.

Orientation cue: You’ll find the entrance to Addison’s Walk at the far side of the quad, next to the river gate.

About

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“The New Building: Dating from 1735 (hence ‘New!’), this imposing building provided C.S. Lewis with a beautifully situated suite of rooms. They were on the second floor (first floor by English reckoning), near the middle. The two windows directly to the right of the protruding centre section, above the wisteria, were Lewis’s. It was here that Lewis was converted to a belief in God (theism).
From Surprised By Joy, by C.S. Lewis:
‘You must picture me alone in that room in Magdalen, night after night, feeling, whenever my mind lifted even for a second from my work, the steady unrelenting approach of Him whom I so earnestly desired not to meet. That which I greatly feared had at last come upon me. In Trinity Term of 1929 I gave in and admitted that God was God, and knelt and prayed: perhaps that night, the most dejected and reluctant convert in all of England.’
Addison’s Walk: Named after the great English man of letters and graduate of Magdalen, Joseph Addison, this was a favourite walking place for Lewis and his friends.
From They Stand Together: The Letters of C.S. Lewis to Arthur Greeves:
‘September 1931 – He [Hugo Dyson] stayed the night with me in College… Tolkien came too, and did not leave till 3 in the morning… We began (in Addison’s Walk just after dinner) on metaphor and myth – interrupted by a rush of wind which came so suddenly on the still warm evening and sent so many leaves pattering down that we thought it was raining…. We continued on Christianity: a good long satisfying talk in which I learned a lot….
October 1931 – Now what Dyson and Tolkien showed me was this: that if I met the idea of sacrifice in a Pagan story I didn’t mind it at all… Now the story of Christ is simply a true myth: a myth working on us in the same way as the others, but with tremendous difference that it really happened…. Does this amount to a belief in Christianity? … I am also nearly sure that it happened….’
Deer Park: The deer in this special reserve are kept as part of the Magdalen College grounds. Once a year one of these magnificent beasts has the great honour of becoming the feast for Magdalen College and its guests.
From C.S. Lewis’s Letters:
‘My big sitting room looks north and from it I can see nothing, not even a gable or a spire, to remind me that I am in town. I look down on a stretch of ground which passes into a grove of immemorial forest trees, at present coloured autumn red. Over it stray deer. They are erratic in their habits… Some mornings when I look out there will be half a dozen chewing the cud just underneath me… It is a sound that will be as familiar to me as the cough of the cows in the field at home for I hear it day and night.’”

Lewis lived and taught in these rooms for nearly three decades. It was here that faith slowly overtook his scepticism, leading to the famous late-night walk with Tolkien and Hugo Dyson on Addison’s Walk, where the idea of “myth becoming fact” reshaped his understanding of Christianity.
The Deer Park remains one of the oldest enclosed parks in England and still forms the tranquil backdrop Lewis saw each morning from his study window.

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