Monday's Memories: The Kilns, part 1

When we first came into The Kilns we joined the four others who had made appointments and the lady who was living and leading the work there at the time.  

The Entrance Hall

The room to the right is the main living area where we met with a young man and woman of college age whose only exposure to Lewis was Narnia and a man and his wife, the man being an avid collector and studier of all things Inklings.  I snapped these pictures at the end of our tour while everyone was looking at his rare books.

Our guide started out by sharing with us a little of the history of Lewis buying this house, and it was really meaningful to me in the way it illuminated the character of the man whose writing we loved.  The story began with Lewis as a young man enlisting in WWI, which has been a forgotten war for me in a lot of ways, something I didn't know a lot about, but since our trip I've been more aware of the ways WWI changed history and of how it wiped out almost an entire generation of young men.  We were told that many of the young men made promises to each other that they would look after each others families if they were to die in the war.  Lewis made one such promise to a friend and fellow Irishman, and he kept it.  

His friend died, leaving behind him his divorced mother and younger sister.  When the war was over this mother and daughter were provided for by Lewis.  When Lewis, his brother, and Mrs. Moore bought this house outside of Oxford they had the title put in her name so that no one could take it from her if something were to happen to them.  The generosity of this struck such a chord with me.  

While looking up information for this post I found that Mrs. Moore was apparently not a very easy person to live with, and Warren was often unhappy with how she kept his brother from his writing with household tasks.  But Lewis honored that promise he made to his friend, and even when Mrs. Moore was older and living in a facility where she was cared for, he visited her every day.

During the period of time when the Lewis brothers lived here alone, the bachelors weren't too fastidious about housekeeping.  The walls in the living room above are painted the pale yellow to mimic what they looked like during the time a lot of smoking was done in there with no washing up or airing out.  

Just as in any family (at least, my family did this a good bit growing up), people switched rooms depending on the need of the moment.  This downstairs room was once occupied by Lewis' wife, Joy, when she was sick with cancer.  Her picture is above the fireplace.

Each of the bedrooms were restored by donations, and a plaque told whose room it was and also contained a dedication by the donor.

This is the other side of Warnie's study.  This house, like Jane Austen's, was a really wonderful house.  I love English houses.  I hope I have one some day.

 His bedroom adjoined his study.

This room was added on to the house (see the brick wall above?) to be used by those coming to stay at the Kilns to work on papers or attend seminars.  It's a cozy library of sorts.  The sign in the above picture is the one used by The Eagle and Child in the days of the Inklings (The Bird and Baby, as they referred to it).  Someone rescued it from the alley when the pub was being remodeled. 

  

Now this was cool to see:  a copy of Lewis and Joy's marriage license. It was interesting to hear more personal stories of what she was like, one of which involved her and a shotgun.

Up the stairs we went.  At the top of the stairs we found the attic.  You can read more about this world created by Lewis and his brother as children in Surprised by Joy.

 

At one time Mrs. Moore occupied the adjoining room to Lewis', and he had the door bolted shut and a metal stairway and door cut into the wall of his room, which you'll be able to see in some later outdoor pictures.  He then had his own private entrance to his bedroom.  In later years when Mrs. Moore was no longer living at the Kilns, the adjoining room was used as Lewis' study.  Since those were the years he wrote The Chronicles of Narnia, it is most likely they were written from this room.  

 Returning downstairs we visited the kitchen and the room off the kitchen which was Douglas Gresham's when he was a boy.  The house had fallen into some disrepair during the reign of the bachelors, and Douglas narrowly escaped having the ceiling fall on his head.  I think Joy heard the noise of it just in time and after that she oversaw some renovations in the house.

I think that concludes your tour for now.  Hopefully part 2 will take place on Friday.  Spending two days a week going through our pictures is making me realize just how much we did during our two weeks.  It was a pretty comprehensive tour.  And pretty wonderful, I might add.