Addison's Walk
RecommendedThe footpath around a Cherwell island in Magdalen's grounds — named for Joseph Addison, walked by Joseph Addison, made famous a century later by C.S. Lewis and Tolkien.
13 entries across places, people, and walks.
The footpath around a Cherwell island in Magdalen's grounds — named for Joseph Addison, walked by Joseph Addison, made famous a century later by C.S. Lewis and Tolkien.
The real shop that inspired Tenniel's illustration in Through the Looking-Glass — now selling all things Alice.
Victorian cemetery established in 1847 on Merton College land. The resting place of Kenneth Grahame, Walter Pater, Charles Williams and the Mad Hatter's reputed model — now a wildlife refuge with muntjac deer and pheasants.
The bench at the back of the Botanic Garden where, in the closing chapter of Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials, Lyra and Will promise to sit at noon on Midsummer's day every year.
Where the Inklings met — Tolkien and Lewis's local on St Giles'.
C.S. Lewis's Oxford home from 1930, built 1922 on the site of a former brickworks. Now the C.S. Lewis Foundation Study Centre.
A brass-plaqued bench in University Parks, dedicated to J.R.R. Tolkien (1892–1973) by the Tolkien Centenary Conference in 1992 — accompanied by two trees said to represent Telperion and Laurelin, the Two Trees of Valinor.
The site, in the Oxford Botanic Garden, of the Pinus nigra under which J.R.R. Tolkien 'often spent his time reposing'.
City cemetery opened in 1889. The Roman Catholic section contains the grave of J.R.R. Tolkien and his wife Edith, headstone inscribed Beren and Lúthien.
The North Oxford house where James Murray edited the first edition of the Oxford English Dictionary from a corrugated-iron shed in the back garden — the original Scriptorium, with 1,029 pigeon-holes and a Post Office postbox of its own.
The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood's most famous fiasco — Rossetti, Morris and Burne-Jones painted Arthurian scenes onto the bare brickwork of the Union's debating hall in 1857. The paint started peeling before the work was finished.
A short central-Oxford loop through the locations of Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials, ending at the bench in the Botanic Garden where Lyra and Will keep their promise.
A circuit of the Oxford addresses, colleges and pubs that frame J.R.R. Tolkien's working life — Exeter, Pembroke, Merton, the Botanic Garden tree, the University Parks memorial bench, the Eagle and Child, ending at his grave at Wolvercote.