Little Lea, 76 Circular Road, Belfast, BT4 2GD

Little Lea, 76 Circular Road, Belfast

Little Lea is a large two-and-a-half-storey Domestic Revival suburban house built in 1905, designed by the architects Watt, Tulloch and Fitzsimmons. It displays all the hallmarks of the genre: a façade combining brick and painted roughcast with rosemary tile cladding, gabled bays, an overhanging tiled roof with exposed rafter ends, multi-paned windows, dormers, and tall chimneystacks. The house was built by Albert Lewis, a Cork-born Belfast solicitor of Welsh descent, for his family, and became the childhood home of his son, the writer C.S. Lewis. It remained in the Lewis family until 1930. The property sits on the west side of Circular Road, with a large garden to the north and a smaller but still generous garden to the south. To the west end there is a large, relatively recently added two-storey extension (thought to date from around 1985) and a single-storey garage extension, both of which are considered relatively sympathetic to the original building. A further large single-storey garage, set at an angle to the main building, lies to the west of the house. To the east is the driveway, with recent brick gate pillars and curving walls but no actual gates. At the north end of the north garden stands a belt of tall Castlewellan Gold conifers screening the grounds of two further properties, which appear to have been built on land originally belonging to Little Lea and are approached by a drive to the west.

The front elevation faces north and is asymmetrical. To the left of centre is a large but relatively shallow two-storey gabled bay. At the centre of its ground floor is a projecting gabled porch in brick with stone dressings. The north-facing gable of the porch contains a broad timber door with panelled lower two-thirds and Art Nouveau-style leaded glass to the upper-third panes. The door is approached via two stone steps and an encaustic tiled threshold, the whole flanked by low brick sides with stone coping and stone ball finials. The doorway has in-and-out sandstone dressings with a bevelled reveal. To both the short east and west faces of the porch there is a small sandstone-dressed window with quarter-circle reveals and bevelled flush cills, each filled with Art Nouveau-style leaded glazing. The porch has stone-coped diagonal buttresses with stone quoins above buttress level, a stone-coped gable with stone ball finials to the kneelers and apex, and a tiled roof with an overhang of shaped rafter ends and plain fascias.

To either side of the porch, still within the gabled bay, is a relatively small two-light mullioned window with in-and-out sandstone dressings and mullion, bevelled reveals, and small leaded panes, some incorporating bullseye glass. The inner light of each window is a casement opening. At first-floor level within the bay there are three windows: the central one — which probably lights the half-landing — is twice the width of the identical outer two and has a four-light mullioned and transomed timber frame with Georgian-like but typically Edwardian multi-paned lights. The outer two are considerably squatter but have frames of a similar style, as do most windows elsewhere on the house. The bay is built in brick, with the gable itself clad in rosemary tiles, the lower rows of which are shaped.

To the left side of the gabled bay, the lower half of the façade is in brick with painted roughcast to first-floor level. To the right-hand side of the ground floor there is a tall narrow window of the same general type, with a much smaller window to the left at first-floor level. To the right-hand side of the bay the treatment is similar to the left. Further left and towards the centre at ground-floor level there are two windows of differing sizes, both mainly tall and narrow, with a squatter window at first-floor level close to the roof verge. To the right, that is the west side of the elevation, is the large extension of around 1985. This is one-and-a-half storeys in height, but with a ground-floor-level façade and a vast expanse of roof only visible from the north. The ground-floor façade consists wholly of a large area of modern-style glazing incorporating glazed doors. To the right of this extension is the single-storey garage, which has a large modern up-and-over garage door and a panelled and glazed door to the left, with a large multi-paned sidelight and fanlight.

The shorter east elevation has a complex appearance. To the right is a large two-storey gabled bay projecting off-centre from a larger one-and-a-half-storey gable. To the left of the larger gable the roof drops to two-storey height, and at ground-floor level in this section there is a single-storey hipped-roof projection. This single-storey section is in brick and has two small, widely spaced windows. Rising out of the roof of this section is a broad brick chimney breast extending into a tall brick stack. The recessed façade against which the chimney breast rises is in brick and has no openings. The two-storey projecting bay to the right of the single-storey hipped-roof section is brick to the ground floor and painted roughcast above. At ground-floor level it has a large three-sided flat-roofed bay window with frames as described elsewhere. At first-floor level there is a wide, centrally positioned window. The larger two-and-a-half-storey gable from which this bay projects is exposed only at first-floor and attic level: at first-floor level it is roughcast with a single narrow window to the left; at attic level it is tile-clad, as is the gable to the front, with a small square window to the left.

The west elevation consists of the gable of the single-storey garage (which could not be seen at the time of survey), the exposed portion of the gable of the one-and-a-half-storey extension, and beyond it the exposed portion of the original house gable. The extension gable is brick to the ground floor and roughcast to the first. To the left at ground-floor level is a large modern-style window; to the centre of the first floor is a single window with a top-hung opener. The original house gable beyond is roughcast to first-floor level and tile-clad to the attic, with a squat window to the left at attic level.

The rear, south-facing elevation begins at the left-hand end with the single-storey garage extension, which projects forward and is blank, with a single window on its short east face. To the right of this is the one-and-a-half-storey extension, brick to the ground floor and roughcast above. At ground-floor level there is a modern bowed window, and at the upper level a very small window close to the roof verge. To the right of the extension is the original section of the house, also brick at ground floor and roughcast above. At ground-floor level there is a large modern sliding patio door — originally a window — with a small narrow window to its right. At first-floor level there are two windows of differing sizes, the right-hand one quite small. The right-hand half of the rear elevation is occupied by a joined pair of large two-storey gabled bays. These are identical, each with a brick façade, a large three-sided ground-floor bay window as on the east elevation, tile cladding above, and a single broad window at first-floor level. At the far right-hand edge of the rear elevation are the short south faces of the small single-storey hipped-roof section and the two-storey bay described in the east elevation account; neither has any openings. An Ulster History Circle blue plaque recording Little Lea's connection with C.S. Lewis has been placed on the upper level of the south face of the two-storey bay.

The entire roof is covered in rosemary tiles with an overhang of exposed rafter ends. The bargeboards are plain except for a dentilled moulding near their upper edge. On the north slope of the roof there is a small flat-roofed dormer to the right of centre. On the south slope there are two larger dormers: one just to the left of the gabled bays and abutting a chimneystack, the other set at a slightly higher level between the two bays. All dormers have timber windows in a style consistent with those on the lower floors. There are two tall brick chimneystacks with stone coping to the north, centrally located on the original portion of the house, and two further stacks to the south, to either side of the rear gabled bays. The chimney pots are a mixed assortment. A further stack that formerly stood at the west gable was removed when the extension was built. Rainwater goods are a mixture of cast iron and PVC.

Historical and literary significance

Little Lea was built for Albert Lewis and his family, who moved there in 1905. Albert was a solicitor, born in Cork of Welsh descent; his wife Flora was the daughter of the Reverend Thomas Hamilton, also a Cork man and then rector of St Mark's Church of Ireland, Dundela. The couple had previously lived at Dundela Villas, a relatively modest two-storey semi-detached house on the site now occupied by Dundela Flats. With growing prosperity, Albert was able to commission the much larger Little Lea — also known as Leeborough — in the more affluent Strandtown and Belmont area a short distance to the north.

Clive Staples Lewis, known as Jack, was born on 29 November 1898 and was the second of Albert and Flora's two sons. Though Albert is said to have complained about the new house's defects, the family settled there and it became C.S. Lewis's childhood home. The spacious house offered the boys an attic study, a well-stocked library, and ample grounds. This relatively happy and carefree early childhood came to an end when Lewis's mother became ill and died of cancer in 1908. Barely a month after her death, Lewis and his elder brother Warren, known as Warnie, were sent to Wynyard boarding school in England, which Lewis found harsh and deeply unhappy. The school closed in 1910, allowing Lewis to return to Ireland. He was enrolled at Campbell College near the family home in September of that year, but illness led to his withdrawal after only six weeks; he and Warnie were then sent to Malvern College in England. Lewis remained there until 1914, when he went to study under William Thompson Kirkpatrick, a fellow Belfast man and family friend, at his home in Great Bookham, Surrey. Under Kirkpatrick, Lewis developed a love of poetry — particularly Virgil and Homer — and a command of French, German, and Italian, as well as an engagement with Greek, Irish, and Norse mythology, all of which would later influence his fiction.

In 1917 Lewis was accepted at University College, Oxford, but soon chose to volunteer for the army and by the end of that year was serving in the trenches of northern France. After the war he returned to Oxford and resumed his studies with great enthusiasm. In 1925, having graduated with first-class honours in Greek and Latin Literature, Philosophy and Ancient History, and English Literature, he was elected to a teaching post in English at Magdalen College, Oxford, where he remained for twenty-nine years. In 1955 he became Professor of Medieval and Renaissance Literature at Magdalen College, Cambridge.

Albert Lewis died in 1929, and the following year Lewis and Warnie sold Little Lea. Lewis nonetheless maintained strong ties with Belfast and Ireland throughout his life. In 1932, during a fortnight spent at Bernagh — the home of his friend Arthur Greeves, which still stands directly across the road from Little Lea — he wrote his first major work, The Pilgrim's Regress, an account of his own spiritual journey to the Christian faith. Critics have noted how his later fiction, including the Narnia books, drew on the Irish landscape and on childhood holidays to Donegal and the Carlingford area. It has also been suggested that the wardrobe in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe may have been inspired by a small dormer room within Little Lea itself.

Lewis's subsequent works brought him acclaim as a religious writer, literary scholar, and novelist. The Allegory of Love (1936), still considered a masterpiece, was a history of love literature from the early Middle Ages to Shakespeare. Out of the Silent Planet (1938) was the first of a science fiction trilogy whose hero is loosely modelled on his friend J.R.R. Tolkien, author of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. When Lewis turned to children's fiction, both his publisher and some friends — including Tolkien, who objected to what he saw as clashing elements such as Father Christmas, an evil witch, talking animals, and children — tried to dissuade him. Lewis did not heed their advice. Following the publication of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe in 1950, he quickly wrote six further Narnia books, completing the series with The Last Battle in 1956. Although the books were not warmly received by critics at first, they gained widespread popularity through word of mouth and have since sold more than one hundred million copies, becoming among the most beloved works of classic children's literature.

After completing the Narnia series, Lewis continued to write on autobiographical and religious subjects, though less prolifically. His later years were much occupied with the illness of his wife, Joy Gresham, whom he married in 1956 and who died of cancer in 1960. His own health subsequently declined, and in the summer of 1963 he resigned his Cambridge post. He died on 22 November 1963 — the same day as the assassination of President Kennedy and the death of Aldous Huxley — an event that passed with little public notice at the time. His reputation has since grown to worldwide proportions, and he is now remembered both as a highly respected Anglican theologian and literary scholar and as the author of the Chronicles of Narnia. Today Little Lea remains a family home in private ownership and, despite the western extension, both the house and its grounds survive much as they were during C.S. Lewis's boyhood.