Belfast

A passage between shores

Belfast grew around a crossing of the Lagan. Lewis’s 1837 history places the river passage at the centre of the early settlement’s strategic importance. ^[2]

Successive castles

The directory traces a succession of fortified sites and repeatedly damaged castles. It associates John de Courcy with a replacement castle after the destruction of an earlier stronghold, and records further destruction during Edward Bruce’s campaign. Its account eventually reaches the Chichester grant in 1612. ^[2]

C. S. Lewis’s Belfast childhood

Clive Staples Lewis was born in Belfast in 1898. His parents Albert and Flora lived at Dundela Villas on the Holywood Road, and the family moved to Little Lea in 1905. The Ulster-Scots Agency’s exhibition links the house and surrounding hills with Lewis’s childhood recollections in Surprised by Joy. ^[3]

Lewis briefly attended Campbell College in 1910 before continuing his education in England. His subsequent career as a scholar and writer developed elsewhere, but Belfast remained the setting of his earliest family memories. ^{[3] [4]}