MANSFIELD ROAD (LEWIS’S FIRST NIGHT IN OXFORD)
Directions
Continue along Holywell Street until you reach the junction with Mansfield Road. Turn right. The first house on the right-hand corner is where Lewis spent his first night in Oxford, December 1916.
Orientation cue: Look for a cream-coloured townhouse with tall sash windows opposite the corner of Mansfield College.
About
“Turn into Mansfield and stop by the first house on your right. It was here that Lewis spent his first night in Oxford in December 1916.
From Surprised By Joy, by C.S. Lewis:
‘My first taste of Oxford was comical enough… I had come out of the station on the wrong side and been all this time walking into what was even then the mean and sprawling suburb of Botley… I did not see to what extent this little adventure was an allegory of my whole life.’”
Lewis arrived as a young man of eighteen, fresh from Belfast and newly enlisted in the Officer Training Corps. His bewildered wander through the wrong end of town became, in retrospect, a metaphor for his early spiritual searching — a detour that would eventually lead him home.
