When I was a kid I wasn’t the best of readers. It was hard for me. But there was one collection of books that pulled me in to such an extent that I would read it in spite of the struggle, The Chronicles of Narnia. I remember sitting in the back of my closet hoping I’d be transported somewhere cool like Lucy. It never happened of course, but today I do sense a bit of a “transport” while I visited the neighborhood of the young CS Lewis, the writer of the Chronicles.
Clive Staples Lewis was born and raised in eastern Belfast. It was this neighborhood, his grandfather’s church, and the early loss of his mother that shape his allegoric writings, the Chronicles and his Christian based texts. And it’s here that the city of Belfast created a park to commemorate its native-born son and his work at C.S. Lewis Square. This free public park is well worth the visit and well positioned to also take in some of the notable murals in eastern Belfast.