I've never had the Tolkien experience, but this thread reminded me of something I'd not thought about for years.
I attended Durham University, and it snowed a lot during my three years there (and not just in the recognised winter months *imagine blue frozen smilie face here*). My faculty was in the old part of town, within the loop of the river, and one way back to my college from there -- on foot, always -- took me over the river and up a path through a small wooded area on the other bank, which I often used as dusk was falling. One lone lamp post stood at a bend, with trees and rising ground behind it. The lamp post, its light shining in the twilight, the trees and woodland plants, the swirling snow ... I could never pass it without thinking of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. I always felt that if there was magic anywhere in England, it was there on a winter's evening.
Great reminiscence.
I don't suppose there's a connection in Lewis's imaginative history--i.e. that the lamp-post you describe actually settled in Lewis's imagination, to come forth in the composition of
The Lion years later. But there certainly is a Lewis connection with Durham in winter.
Lewis was invited by the University of Durham to give the Riddell Memorial Lectures. At Newcastle-upon-Tyne, he did so on 24, 25, and 26 February 1943. The lectures may be found in one of his finest (though shortest) books,
The Abolition of Man.
Lewis went up with his brother, Warren, who wrote up the visit in his excellent diary (a substantial selection from which is available as
Brothers and Friends). Warren wrote:
Wednesday 24th February.
[A]rrived at Durham at 9.51 in the still early morning sunlight of a lovely day and set out on foot, down so steep a decline that we saw our own train trundling off many hundreds of feet above out heads. I had always thought vaguely of Durham as a colliering cum manufacturing town with a minor university and some sort of cathedral locked away grimily in it, and so had [C. S. Lewis]. In consequence, its exquisite beauty came upon us with an impact I shall long remember. Crossing a high stone bridge over the Wear, which here runs in a wide steep timbered bed, we walked along under a wall which encloses castle, cathedral, university, and Bishops Palace. Each and all lovely, but especially the Cathedral which is one of the most splendid Norman buildings I have ever had the good fortune to see, built of an almost honey coloured stone, with twin towers at the west end, and a great central tower.
........Lewis mentioned the University in the Preface to his delectable novel
That Hideous Strength. Evidently he thought that he owed it to the University to assure readers that his fictional Edgestow was not based on Durham, "a university with which the only connection I have had was entirely pleasant." You would have to tell me if the descriptions in sections 2 and 3 of the first chapter sound at all like Durham.
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