Castle on a Cliff: The Irish Roots of C. S. Lewis—Judith McQuoid
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Note: Judith McQuoid’s first middle grades novel, Giant, is now available for purchase through the Rabbit Room Store.
by Judith McQuoid
When we think of C. S. Lewis, we often think of Oxford. We think of Magdalen College, the Eagle and Child pub, and his home at the Kilns. All of these were significant and much-cherished parts of his life in England.
But Lewis wasn’t English. Rather, he was born in Belfast to Irish parents from County Cork. Born in 1898 before the partition of the island into the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland, Lewis considered himself an Ulsterman throughout his life. His friends and colleagues, Tolkien included, also thought of him as Irish. His autobiography, Surprised by Joy, speaks of the joys of his Irish life, and his personal letters abound with references to Ireland. Though he was sent to boarding school in England in 1908, he suffered terribly from homesickness and only really began to thrive there when he joined the Surrey household of another Ulsterman, Kirkpatrick, who had been his father’s headmaster at school. And of course, one of his great joys at Oxford was finding other Irishmen to befriend.
So Lewis’s early imaginative life wasn’t formed among the dreaming spires of Oxford or in Cambridge but among the “Green Hills” of Antrim, Castlereagh, and Holywood surrounding Belfast. At a very young age, his nurse Lizzie Endicott told him Irish folktales. Flora Lewis took her two sons, Warnie and Jacks (as he was known in his youth), on long holidays to places like Ballynahinch and Killough in County Down, as well as Castlerock and Ballycastle along the North Coast. When he was studying in England, he came back to Belfast for every school holiday and in later life, only World War II or illness stopped him coming home to Ireland at least once a year for the rest of his days.
I too grew up in the North of Ireland. Like countless other children here, I have clambered over hexagonal rocks at the Giant’s Causeway and stumbled across fairy rings in ancient woods. My imagination has been shaped by this landscape, this people, the words we use, the stories we tell.
My father, another storyteller, took us to many of the same places that Lewis went to in both his childhood and in later life on walking holidays. One of those places is Dunluce. Clinging precariously to a cliff on the North Coast of Ireland, there has been a castle here since the 1200s. The current ruin was abandoned in the late 1600s but still it stands, gazing across the sea to the Scottish Isles. While it was inhabited, legend has it that the kitchen fell into the sea. Legend also says that mermaids have been known to lurk in the cave below.
Locals believe that Dunluce inspired a significant feature that appears in most of Jack’s seven Narnia Chronicles: Cair Paravel. He visited Dunluce at least twice with his mother and brother when he was about six years old. With its drum towers, turrets, corbels, manor house, and great hall, it’s easy to see how Lewis drew on his own childhood experiences of the castle when he was creating Narnia’s beautiful fortress.
In the last chapter of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, the great castle is the setting for the coronation of the four Pevensies in its magnificent hall (with singing mermaids, of course). However, the hall and courtyard are almost unrecognizable in the next Chronicle, Prince Caspian. The ruins that Lucy, Susan, Peter, and Edmund find hidden within the apple orchard bear closer resemblance to the Dunluce of today and of Jack’s day. Set on a rocky peninsula, it has an outer courtyard like the one at the end of the first chapter in Caspian. The remains of three towers, several flights of stone stairs, and a roofless great hall are still standing, all of which are recognized by the four siblings in chapter two. There’s even a souterrain that could double as a treasure chamber. Many times I have scrambled over the fallen stones and bumpy grass and wondered what the vast rooms would have looked like in all their glory. I think Jack must have imagined that, too.
Jack’s friend and fellow Inkling J. R. R. Tolkien wrote in a letter to a former classmate of his in 1971 that a story emerges out of the “leaf-mould” in the writer’s mind, made up of all the sights and experiences stored in the subconscious. In recent years, revisiting the Narnia stories, Dunluce, and other, more hidden places where Jack roamed, I’ve been frequently struck by how much of his Irish surroundings are apparent in the Chronicles. It seems to me that he was mining his childhood memories, either consciously or not, when he began to create the world of Narnia at the end of the 1940s.
That’s how my new book Giant started. A castle on a cliff, a heavily carved wardrobe, a strangely compassionate lion’s face on the door of his grandparents’s house, a lone lamppost standing in a wood—these were all everyday objects in Jack’s daily life in the North of Ireland and so they’re in Giant too. The books he read are also an important part of the story: Jonathan Swift, Beatrix Potter, E. Nesbit, Mark Twain, Irish myths, and countless other sources added to the deep, rich loam of his mind. Giants, talking animal characters, brave knights, a group of siblings, and fantastical journeys all play a part in Narnia, and all can be found in the books Jacks was reading in his loft room at home.
Jack Lewis and his brother kept on coming home. Even after their father had died and their family home had been sold, they made their way back there time and again. In August 1931, a couple of months after Warnie had returned to the Christian faith and a few weeks before his younger brother followed suit, the Lewis boys took a holiday to Castlerock, where they had stayed with their mother when they were young. They agreed that it was one of the best holidays they ever had together.
And in 1963, the last year of his life, Jack had a summer holiday to the North Coast planned with Douglas, his stepson, and Arthur, his lifelong friend from across the road in East Belfast. They had their boat trip from England and a hotel in Portstewart already booked. Perhaps Jack planned to take 17-year-old Douglas up the road to see Dunluce Castle? But he fell ill and never made it home to Ireland again, passing away a few months later in November.
In the last chapter of The Last Battle, the Chronicles end with a glimpse of Cair Paravel restored far beyond its previous glory. Lucy is able to see her bedroom window in the far distance of that New Narnia. And Peter even wonders if they have been in those Westward lands before, a long time ago, on a holiday when they were young.
In the era of the New Heaven and New Earth, I’m sure Dunluce will again have tapestries adorning the walls, colorful tiles on the floors, and fireplaces lit. Perhaps we’ll also find a lad called Jack curled up in a comfy armchair there, poring over books from the well-stocked shelves.
Judith McQuoid was born in Belfast but grew up mostly in Texas and England. She now lives in a small village in Northern Ireland, deep in the countryside but close to the city. Her homeland, its landscapes, and folklore inspire her to write authentic, enchanting stories for young people. Her first middle grade novel, Giant, was published by Little Island in 2025 and available for purchase through the Rabbit Room store.
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Photo by K. Mitch Hodge on Unsplash