I WENT down the rabbit-hole.

So to speak.

Actually, my family and I visited the Lewis Carroll Centre in Daresbury.

Lewis Carroll is known the world over and changed the face of literature.

You can see his guiding hand in the work of Spike Milligan, John Lennon and Ken Dodd – all of whom acknowledged his influence.

His stories continue to be turned into movies. Tim Burton has a particular love of Carroll’s work.

Not bad for a Warrington lad.

The Alice author was born in the parsonage at Daresbury in 1832.

Then he was Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, the son of the parish parson. He lived 11 years there.

It made an indelible mark on him. He returned years later, as a famous author and photographer, and took pictures of his home.

It’s fascinating to think how much of what he saw, heard and felt at Daresbury found its way into Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through The Looking Glass.

We’ll never know for sure, but we can speculate.

Although the phrase ‘to grin like a Cheshire cat’ was already in existence before he wrote Alice, along with ‘mad as a hatter’, Carroll took these familiar touchstones and turned them into literary gemstones.

There are a number of locations which might have inspired Carroll’s own version of the grinning cat.

One theory is that the carved smiling feline on the side of St Wilfrid’s Church in the heart of Grappenhall nudged the idea into being. Another is that the Cat and Lion pub, in Stretton, could be the origin.

Both buildings would have been familiar to Lewis Carroll.

Young Charlie Dodgson spent many hours playing and dreaming in the gardens of Walton Hall. Back then the country hall and gardens belonged to the Greenall brewery family and the future Lewis Carroll would be taken there by his father, the Rev Charles Dodgson snr.

Surely the dingles and dells influenced Carroll’s thoughts and preoccupations. Is the topography of Wonderland based on Walton Hall and gardens, I wonder?

The Lewis Carroll Centre is brilliant, well worth a visit. It’s nice and compact but jammed with information to spark an interest in this most interesting of writers.

All Saints Church, too, is lovely. The Lewis Carroll memorial stained glass window is beautiful, featuring Alice and other characters from the books.

In the churchyard stands the original font, where he was baptised.

I’ve always found it fitting that Creamfields, the festival known for its dreamy, trippy, trance-like music, is held in the fields surrounding Lewis Carroll’s childhood home.

Charlie Dodgson would have approved.