Tuesday
Our morning in Stratford began grey and cold, though not cloudy and wet like we had in Normandy, and we were once again fighting the clock. Our tour at The Kilns was scheduled for 9 a.m., but we were 25 minutes late because of traffic. The home of C.S. Lewis is kept not as a shrine but as a place to remember his work. As such, it is not labeled so we were not sure which of the houses on the street was the correct house. We decided on one and were greeted at the door by two gracious women, the warden of the house and her intern. They broke us into two groups for efficiency and walked us through Lewis’ home room by room talking about the man and how he lived. The most surprising tidbit was that Lewis and his brother maintained the house as little more than a bachelor pad before his marriage so it was filthy and in ill repair when his wife arrived. It is in very nice shape now. We wandered in the woods behind the house before we went to see his grave. By the way, the origin of the title “The Kilns” is that the house is located near a former clay quarry and kilns for making brick. Lewis is buried in the churchyard of the Anglican church that is only a few blocks away. The grave is not highlighted or improved in any way, which made it difficult to locate. Lewis was an academic his entire life at Oxford first and then Cambridge. Oxford is the more prestigious of the two universities but Lewis was blacklisted at Oxford when he was converted to Christianity in 1931. The last ten years of his life he taught at Magdalen College (pronounced “Maudlin”) of Cambridge. He would commute back and forth to Cambridge staying at The Kilns only on the weekends.
After a short drive to the center of Oxford we took a quick walk around the Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archeology to see some of the treasures. Just like every other museum that we have visited so far, there was no way to begin to appreciate even a small fraction of what was exhibited. However, we were able to see the brooch of King Alford among many other treasures. Our driver, John, then gave us a quick walking tour around the city. The universities of Oxford and Cambridge do not really have campuses; they are cities that have colleges sprinkled around them (33 at Cambridge and over 40 at Oxford). The day continued to be cold with a stiff breeze. There was no rain but we were all very chilly as we walked through the streets. After an hour we said goodbye to our driver of the last 5 days because British law required him to have a couple days off. We had spied a Starbucks on our tour so we quickly returned to it to plan the rest of our afternoon. After warming up in the café we headed toward the University of Oxford Press and then the University of Oxford Store. After some looking around, we identified the University Church Chapel of St. Mary the Virgin where we reviewed the trial of Latimer, Ridley, and Cranmer. They were condemned to death for their belief in the Bible’s authority and other spiritual reasons. The amazing thing is that Cranmer was the Archbishop of Canterbury and was the primary author of the Book of Common Prayer. I had hoped for some shopping time at this point, but we were forced to hurry back to bus (although we did have one shopping stop) to meet our new driver, Mike.
Our day ended early to ensure that we left enough time to get to the play production by the Royal Shakespeare Theater. Our night at the theater lived up to its billing as we enjoyed a performance that was relatively close to our standing position in the gallery. We were fortunate to have tickets at all, but I admit that standing for 3 ½ hours was a bit long. Since Mrs. Frisk covered King Lear with the students recently and Mr. Sarr is a trained English teacher, I was the most ignorant of our group and even I caught the plot. We arrived back at the hostel at nearly eleven so this was our latest night by far. In all, it was a splendid day, but frigid day.
The pictures are self explanatory except the bottom; which is a picture of our "mini-bus".
