his fortune in the linen trade, and left money to found a school based on the values of a Liberal Protestant education. Initially the school was primarily a boarding school but it has, particularly since the 1970s, become primarily a day school; in 2009 it had 879 pupils, only about 85 (10%) of whom were boarders. As a selective independent school, it admits pupils based on academic selection. Until 2006 pupils began at the school at age 11, but since the closure of the school's separate preparatory school, Cabin Hill, the school has accepted pupils from age 4 into the newly built Junior School, and both boys and girls into the school's kindergarten located on the school's grounds. The Latin motto of the school is Ne Obliviscaris ("Do Not Forget"). Campbell College Central Hall was one of many hosting locations across Belfast and Ulster where the Ulster Covenant was signed by many in opposition to home rule on 28 September 1912. In 1935 Jimmy Steele led an attempted Irish Republican Army raid on the school to secure the arms inside the college Officers' Training Corps. The RUC at Strandtown was tipped off and the raid was unsuccessful. A gun battle took place at the gate lodge on Hawthornden Road in which Constable Ian Hay received five gunshot wounds, but survived. In 1936 Steele and three other IRA members were captured, prosecuted and imprisoned in Crumlin Road Gaol. Campbell lost 126 former students in World War I. During World War II the school was requisitioned by the War Office as a hospital, with the pupils transferred to Portrush, north Antrim. There are separate memorials to the dead of both World Wars in the Central Hall. The author C.S. Lewis, who grew up nearby, attended the school for two months, but was withdrawn because of a serious respiratory illness and sent to Malvern (Cherbourg School), famous at the time for treating people with lung problems. The gas lamppost on the school drive is claimed to have been the inspiration for that mentioned in Lewis' The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, though some sources state a lamppost in Crawfordsburn Country Park was the inspiration. Still others believe that the gas lamps in the lower area of the woods on the Malvern Hills above the town were his inspiration. Lewis claimed in his autobiography Surprised by Joy that Campbell retained the character of