Week 8: Tolkien's other
work/Tolkien's influences – Tuesday 18th April 2023
#TolkienTrewsday #TolkienTuesday #Tolkien
Welcome to #TolkienTrewsday #TolkienTuesday.
The hub for this Twitter-based event can be found here.
Tolkien Trewsday (the Hobbit name for Tuesday!) invites the #Tolkien community to form a fellowship to collectively tweet about a pre-selected theme about Tolkien, his works and his life.
Each week a new theme will be selected, often via a poll or by a guest host/curator, and together we will build a collective outpouring of creativity, knowledge and love for J.R.R. Tolkien and the adaptions based on his works.
The inspiration for this comes from the highly successful #FolkloreThursday which engaged lovers of Folklore, academics, artists and more to use Twitter to discuss it.
We only ask that if you are joining in, please do so with courtesy and kindness in your tweets. This is a positive-action community event, open to all and supportive of fan diversity. Intolerance, racism, bigotry have no place here.
💬 This week’s theme
Week 8: “Tolkien's other work” and
“Tolkien's influences” – Tuesday 18th April 2023
Following a poll (which ended in our first tie) Tolkien Trewsday invites you to join us for a day focused on the themes of “Tolkien's other work” and “Tolkien's influences”. From Tolkien’s other fiction or his academic works to the places that influenced him, this weeks theme looks at two aspects of Tolkien: the works outside of Middle-earth and the influences on his work.
How to contribute
We are keeping it very simple. All you need to do to join is tweet something about the current week’s theme and use the following hashtags in your tweet:
#TolkienTrewsday #TolkienTuesday #Tolkien
Your tweet, besides following the theme, can be anything. Examples include:
- Non-Middle-earth fiction by Tolkien
- Tolkien’s academic work (“The Battle of Maldon” has just been released!)
- Mythology that influenced Tolkien
- Places that Tolkien knew or that inspired him
Former Brooklands Officers Hospital, Hull (Author's photo 2017)
Week Eight – A gazetteer of real-world locations connected with J.R.R. Tolkien
For week eight of #TolkienTrewsday #TolkienTuesday we got the unexpected tie in the poll for our chosen theme, so we had two themes as a choice: "Tolkien's other works" (outside of Middle-earth) and "Tolkien's influences" (literature, places, etc). I thought with these options now was the ideal time to talk about the direction I am hoping to go with my ongoing Tolkien research, which is looking at landscape and the creatures that inhabit Middle-earth with a focus on folklore, archaeology, culture and art.
I will be examining how adaptions of Middle-earth approach landscape, including digital representations such as “The Lord of the Rings Online” by Standing Stones Games and how the various roleplaying and board games use landscape and creatures. I have a special interest in supernatural and preternatural creatures.
Another aspect I am very much interested in is the real and physical landscapes that Tolkien knew, visited and was influenced by and also the Tolkien tourism that is now flourishing around known and disputed locations.
For today’s blog I want to provide some of the material (mostly links) that I am collating about real-world locations which I am using to plan visits out to places in the UK and further afield. I’ve also started to create a connected Google Maps page with the information I am collating, hopefully it will prove useful to others wanting to make trips to Tolkien-related places.
Tolkien’s real-life geographical influences is a well-covered topic in Tolkien studies with great contributions from John Garth (“Tolkien and the Great War: The Threshold of Middle-earth“ and “The Worlds of J.R.R. Tolkien: The Places that Inspired Middle-earth”), Robert Blackham (“J.R.R. Tolkien: Inspiring Lives”), Michael Flowers (Chapter in “’Something Has Gone Crack’: New Perspectives on J.R.R. Tolkien in the Great War” and “A Hemlock by any other name…” blog post), Phil Mathison (“Tolkien’s East Yorkshire”), Andrew H. Morton (“Tolkien's Gedling 1914” and “Tolkien's Bag End”), Martin S. Monsch (“Switzerland in Tolkien's Middle-Earth: In the footsteps of his adventurous summer journey in 1911-with hiking suggestions”), Seamus Hamill-Keays (“Tolkien In Buckland, Breconshire,1905” blog post), David Haden (“Tree & Star: Tolkien and the quest for Earendel”) and others.
What follows is a short
gazetteer of places (with websites) that have some association with J.R.R.
Tolkien, whether directly, implied or unsubstantiated. Note the list below is nowhere
complete and I intend to update as I research and discover more places and
information.
As noted, the authenticity of a location in terms of direct influence or connection to Tolkien can vary between locations. I’ll use a “traffic light” system whereby:
🔴 No proof Tolkien ever visited or no evidence for location influencing his work.
🟡 Tolkien possibly visited the location but influence on his work is unconfirmed.
🟢 Confirmed visit and/or influence on work is back up with evidence either from JRR Tolkien, Christopher Tolkien or a recognised academic/scholar.
What sort of evidence do we find from Tolkien himself for locations that influence him? As can be imagined, Tolkien is hesitant usually to describe direct influences but there are occasions where he does. For example the village of Sarehole (Birmingham) has evidence for its role as the Shire (Hobbiton) across several sources. In a 1966 interview with John Ezard for the Guardian newspaper, Tolkien declared
“I was brought up in considerable poverty but I was happy running about in that country. I took the idea of the hobbits from the village people and children. They rather despised me because my mother liked me to be pretty. I went about with long hair and a Little Lord Fauntleroy costume.”
John Ezard, “Tolkien's shire” (1991) The Guardian [Online] Accessed: 16/04/23. URL: https://www.theguardian.com/books/1991/dec/28/jrrtolkien.classics
This quote appears on the Sarehole Mill webpage, “Highlights: Middle Earth”.
In letters, Tolkien talks about the Warwickshire village (Sarehole) on several occasions and how it was an informative part of his childhood.
178 From a letter to Allen & Unwin
12 December 1955“I am sure that without ‘professor’ I should have heard less about my donnishness, and no one would have said ‘The Shire is not far from North Oxford’. It is in fact more or less a Warwickshire village of about the period of the Diamond Jubilee – that is as far away as the Third Age from that depressing and perfectly characterless straggle of houses north of old Oxford, which has not even a postal existence.”
Carpenter, Humphrey; Tolkien, Christopher. The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien (p. 230). HarperCollins Publishers. Kindle Edition.
and
303 From a letter to Nicholas Thomas
6 May 1968“As for knowing Sarehole Mill,1 it dominated my childhood. I lived in a small cottage almost immediately beside it, and the old miller of my day and his son were characters of wonder and terror to a small child.”
Carpenter, Humphrey; Tolkien, Christopher. The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien (p. 390). HarperCollins Publishers. Kindle Edition.
Locations with this much evidence are sadly far and few between, and in some cases even a potential visual link has been grabbed at by the local tourism industry. Academics and scholars can date when sections or chapters of Tolkien’s books were written and a few claims to be the thing that influenced a scene or location within the books can fall down when it is cross-referenced with what Tolkien actually wrote it. That is most likely the case for the Stonyhurst College/Hurst Green claims, though I’ll examine this at a later date, perhaps once I have visited the area. It is justified to say that Tolkien tourism can play a role in an area’s charm.
Eagle and Child Inn, Oxford (Author's photo 2023)
This is especially true of New Zealand and the connection to the Peter Jackson films. There is now an industry providing for Tolkien fans to visit the locations of sets, especially Hobbiton. With the Amazon Prime TV series, “The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power” having moved from New Zealand to the United Kingdom, perhaps we’ll see similar. With more films from Warner Brothers on the horizon and also a biography film with others on the way, potential adaption Tolkien tourism will gain momentum.
My journey, even pilgrimage if you like, as a Tolkien Randír (Sindarin: Wanderer, pilgrim) will be to explore all places with a connection to Tolkien, from those that we know influenced to him to those where their claim may be more… dubious. I started in February 2023 with a visit to the Imperial War Museum North in Manchester to see J.R.R. Tolkien’s WW1 revolver on display. I’ve recently come back from a trip to London where I did a day trip to Oxford. I’ll do a write up on that quick visit with photographs this week. And at some point I hope to stay over in Malvern to follow in the footsteps of Tolkien, Lewis and Sayer on their hiking tours where an exasperated Tolkien claimed Lewis and brother were “ruthless walkers”.
🚩 The Gazetteer: A guide to Tolkien locations in the United Kingdom and beyond
Legend:
🔴 No proof Tolkien ever visited or no evidence for location influencing his work.
🟡 Tolkien possibly visited the location but influence on his work is unconfirmed.
🟢 Confirmed visit and/or influence on work is back up with evidence either from JRR Tolkien, Christopher Tolkien or a recognised academic/scholar.
Note: The “traffic light” system 🚦 is to not be considered fixed and is changeable, based on more evidence being researched or information provided by others. Quite a few locations are still hotly debated within academic/scholarly circles.
📜 GENERAL
These following websites provide general links to properties and areas associated with J.R.R. Tolkien. Please note some locations have questionable links to Tolkien.
- 📌 BBC – The Hobbit: How England inspired Tolkien's Middle Earth 🟡
- 📌 Countryfile – Find theinspiration for The Lord of the Rings and the The Hobbit in the British countryside 🟡
- 📌 Countryfile – How Great Malvern shaped Narnia, Middle Earth and Nimrod
- 📌 Great British Life – 9
locations in England that inspired Tolkien's Middle Earth
- 📌 National Trust – Experience Tolkien’s Middle-earth 🟡
- 📌 Visit Wales - Places in Wales with connections to JRR Tolkien
- 📌 Visit Ireland – The Burren and Tolkien
📜 BIRMINGHAM
- 📌 Birmingham Tolkien Trail
- 📌 The Guardian - A guided walk
of Tolkien's original Shire, in Birmingham
- 📌 Birmingham Connection: J.R.R. Tolkien
- 📌 Moseley Bog: Link and Link
- 📌 Sarehole Mill
- 📌 Hall Green Library – Tolkien
related art and books (near Sarehole Mill)
- 📌 Plough & Harrow Inn (Edgbaston)
– JRR Tolkien stayed here June 1916.
- 📌 The Oratory (Edgbaston)
- 📌 Perrott’s Folly (Edgbaston)
- 📌 Waterworks Tower (Edgbaston)
- 📌 Edgbaston Reservoir
- 📌 “Old Joe” Joseph ChamberlainMemorial Clock Tower at the University of Birmingham (Edgbaston)
- 📌 Shire County Park
- 📌 Lickey Hills Country Park
📜 ESSEX
- 📌 Maldon (Battle, 991 CE) 🟢
📜 GLOUCESTERSHIRE
- 📌 Mathew Lyons - History and myth: JRR Tolkien, a Roman temple and a ring
- 📌 Lyndey Park (Roman ruins), Aylburton 🟢
- 📌 Vynne Estate, Basingstoke,
Hampshire
Moreton-in-Marsh (Gloucestershire)
- 📌 The Bell Inn, Moreton-in-Marsh
(Prancing Pony)
- 📌 The Four Shire Stone (nr
Moreton-in-Marsh)
- 📌 St. Edward’s Church (North door), Stow-on-the-Wold 🔴
Gelding
- 📌 Gelding (Nottinghamshire) 🟢
Notes: Farm of Aunt Jane Neave (Tolkien stayed three times between 1913-16)
📜 HULL & EAST YORKSHIRE
- 📌 The Tolkien Triangle
- 📌 “In Tolkien’s GenuineFootsteps” (Michael Flowers)
📜 LANCASHIRE
Hurst Green and Stonyhurst College
- 📌 Hobbit Hill – trail
- 📌 Shireburn Arms Hotel - trail
- 📌 Visit Lancashire - J.R.R.Tolkien at Stonyhurst
- 📌 Stonyhurst College: “TheTolkien Trail - Exploring the Ribble Valley”
📜 LEEDS
📜 MANCHESTER
- 📌 Imperial War Museum North, Salford (Manchester) 🟢 Webley .455 Mark 6 (VI military)
📜 OXFORDSHIRE
Oxford
- 📌 University of Oxford – People:J.R.R. Tolkien
The Ridgeway (Wiltshire)
- 📌 Wayland Smithy 🟢
- 📌 Uffington White Horse and
Dragon Hill - Link and Link
📜 STAFFORDSHIRE
- 📌 Staffordshire Tolkien Trail 🟢
- 📌 Shugborough Estate
- 📌 Great Haywood: A Walk with Tolkien (Treasure Trail)
- 📌 Cannock Chase 🟢
- 📌 Kinver Edge (Rock houses), Stourbridge, Staffordshire - Link and Link 🔴
📜 WARWICKSHIRE
- 📌 Warwick: “Tolkien marries inWarwick” (22 March 1916) 🟢
📜 WORCESTERSHIRE (The Malvern Hills)
- 📌 Malvern
✎📔 To add:
- Cornwall: Lizard
- Bournemouth/Poole – Hotel Miramar and 19 Lakeside Road (Branksome Park)
- Hull & Yorkshire: Brooklands, Roos, Withernsea, etc
- Hilary Tolkien: Farm in the Vale of Evesham
- New Zealand
- Switzerland
- Netherlands (Tolkien Museum)
- Wales: Buckland etc
🚩 MAP
I've been experimenting with Google Maps to build a shared map resource to help researchers and travellers find the locations listed on the Gazetteer. It's not perfect, but I'll share what I have created so far.
You can access this map using the following link on Google Maps:
🚩 The Tolkien Randír map
Finally, to close... a few more location photos:
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