A Real Life Narnia Trail: Giants, Stone Tables and Digory

Last weekend I started to lead you all on a CS Lewis Trail through East Belfast and the Mountain of Mournes which is an area known as the “real life Narnia” as the scenic beauty inspired CS Lewis to write about the land of Narnia.  If this is your first visit here you can read  and view the pictures here.  Just let me finish off our little trip around the Mournes with the following:

Giants and Stone Tables

Northern Ireland is known for its myths and legends especially of giants and like myself “Jack” would have been told those stories as a child.  The Legananny Dolmen in Co Down is supposed to mark a giant’s grave and the word “dolmen” is an ancient name meaning a “Stone Table”.

Thanks to Kitty from Into My Own for allowing me to use her 2 photos above of the stone table at Leganarry Dolmen.

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As for the big boulder overlooking Carlingford Lough at Rostrevor  - I was told as a child that the famous giant Finn McCool  got into a fight with Ruscaire the Ice Giant and this is supposed to be one of the boulders they threw at each other across the Lough.  Its called  the Cloughmore Stone or as the locals call it “The Big Stone”:  I spent many a Saturday afternoon up at the stone on family picnics.


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That part of Rostrevor that overlooks Carlingford Lough is my idea of Narnia”. C.S. Lewis.

 [source of picture]

 

A painting of the Cloughmore Stone......

 and Cranfield on the shores of Carlingford Lough.......

 

Our Meeting With Digory

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We headed back into East Belfast again - this time to the Holywood Arches and just wait till you see who we bumped into. 

  No other than Digory!

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The bronze sculpture depicts CS Lewis in 1919 as Digory Kirke from The Magicians Nephew  opening the door of the wardrobe. 

The artist Ross Wilson, states that the sculpture seeks to 'capture the great ideas of sacrifice, redemption, victory and freedom for the sons of Adam and the daughters of Eve' that lie at the heart of The Chronicles of Narnia.

“The image of the man walking towards the wardrobe is a stylized heroic image of C. S. Lewis representing the searcher: an almost 'everyman' setting out to find Aslan. I hope it will be seen as a pointer as well, to show that sometimes the greatest things can be found in the unlikeliest of places, a wardrobe, a world beyond a wardrobe”.

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and I just had to sit on the chair! 

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Ross Wilson “The chair may be used as a vehicle of transport; as the viewer is seated on the bronze chair they travel through Lewis via imagination to Narnia”.

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There are many inscriptions on the back of the wardrobe.

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A letter written by CS Lewis to Anne Walker aged 10.

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And amongst the monobloc paving are 4 large rectangles of granite in a square encasing the sculpture  (you can just about see them in the collage photos above in light grey). Each one of the granite blocs has one of the 4 lines engraved:  

• The Searcher Centenary Sculpture
• CS "Jack" Lewis - Ulsterman
• Writer, Scholar, Teacher, Christian
• Born 1898, Reborn 1931

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Wall Murals

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As you can see this post is lacking flowers today but there still is alot of colour to the next bit of the trail….
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Further on down the road from here just off the Newtownards Road are some wall murals.  Belfast is very famous for its wall murals – but today instead of there being paramilitary propaganda, hooded gunmen and riffles painted on the walls in Dee Street and Convention Place there are these in memory of CS Lewis…………..

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A Little Extra From Little Lea

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Since I started writing this article I have kindly been given permission to show you these photos – I will eventually be adding them to part 1 but Mr Richard James who took the photos was given a private tour of Little Lea with his son in law and he took a photo of the front of Little Lea and inside the little room where Jack and Warren played and where they had their telescope.

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I also made a little 3 minute video of our  trip  and added some special Narnia music called “Are you going to Narnia” to go along with it as we went off on our modern day "Dawn Treader".

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Do any of you know which day CS Lewis died on? – well you’ll never forget now! It was on the same day President JF Kennedy  was assassinated - November 22, 1963.  He died at The Kilns, Oxford, England.
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I hope you all enjoyed the little CS Lewis Trail.  There’s alot more than this to see on the trail but we only had a short time to spend in the area and we still had to do part of the St Patricks trail!

My friend Amber doing a series of quotes from CS Lewis over 31 days:

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Noelle at Ramblings From a Desert Garden has also written about CS Lewis and her trail around The Kilns in Oxford which not many folk get to see around but her Uncle is a college professor and lectures on CS Lewis and he was their tour guide.



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Related Posts
The Real Life Narnian Trail: Part One
A View from a Narnian Bench at Bangor Castle 

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There were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown.
-- Genesis 6: 1-4

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