LEWIS Carroll devotees from around the world found their own wonderland yesterday as the region's links to the author were honoured.

Hundreds of dedicated fans, who form the Lewis Carroll Society, converged on a North Yorkshire conference after making the journey from 37 countries.

The society's 400 members came together in the city of Ripon to celebrate its proud connections to the author and his children's story, Alice in Wonderland.

Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, writing under the pseudonym of Lewis Carroll, will forever be remembered for producing the classic tale - and a great deal of his inspiration is believed to have come from his time in Ripon.

Central to the influence is Ripon Cathedral, where choir stall carvings, including one showing a griffin chasing a rabbit, are believed to have inspired the creation of White Rabbit and other animals from the Alice story.

Local historian Maurice Taylor, who has written a book called Lewis Carroll's Ripon, said that many of the city's most famous landmarks had inspired the author's tales.

Dodgson's father was Canon Charles Dodgson, of Ripon Cathedral, and the family were close to the Badcocks, who lived at Ure Lodge.

Mr Taylor said: "Lewis Carroll was shown photographs of Canon Badcock's daughter, Mary, when he was looking for a face for Alice in Wonderland. And the face of this little girl was the face he chose to send to Sir John Tenniel for the illustrations of Alice."

Mr Taylor said the society's investigations had uncovered a Carroll connection to gypsum craters in the area.

Legend has it that the area's subsidence problems inspired Carroll's vision of a little girl falling into a hole and emerging in a mystical new dimension.

But Dodgson, who died in 1898, was well aware of the issue long before the time when his family would spend 13 weeks a year in Ripon.

His early days were spent at Croft, near Darlington, where his father was rector and he was familar with a trio of local ponds called Hell's Kettles.

Despite being only 22ft deep, for years they were thought to be bottomless and may have stirred his imagination.

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