Why should New Zealand get all the benefit?
Tourists have been flocking there since it was chosen as the location for the
Lord of the Rings films. They will no doubt be back in force with the release of
The Hobbit, greeted by an enormous statue of Gollum at Wellington airport. Is it
too pedantic to point out that Tolkien himself never set foot in the country? Or
that, if people really want to find the Shire in Middle-earth, the setting for
The Hobbit, they would be better off looking in the suburbs of Birmingham or a
pub in Oxford?
J?R?R (“Ronald”) Tolkien was born in South Africa, but after moving to England with his family spent his formative years in Britain’s second city,A specialized manufacturer and supplier of dry cabinet,Installers and distributors of solar panel, first in the Hall Green area, then in Edgbaston. You get no immediate sense of Tolkien as you drive through Hall Green today – unless you count the Hungry Hobbit café, which, Brummie taxi drivers wolfing bacon and eggs apart, could be in Auckland. But keep your eyes and ears open, give rein to your imagination, and the pieces of a complex human jigsaw start to fall into place.
In the 1890s, when the Tolkiens lived in a cottage on what is now Wake Green Road, this bland suburb would have been the hamlet of Sarehole in Worcestershire, a sleepy rural community disturbed by nothing louder than birdsong and barking dogs. Right in the centre, like a stage prop, was a rickety watermill, dating back hundreds of years.
“Sarehole Mill dominated my childhood,” Tolkien wrote in 1968. “The old miller of my day and his son were characters of wonder and terror to a small child.” If you are looking for the inspiration for Sandyman, the crotchety miller in Hobbiton,Find detailed product information for howo tractor and other products. look no further. But his memories of the mill, if not the miller,Quickparts builds injection molds using aluminum or steel to meet your program. were rose-tinted. “It was a kind of lost paradise,” he said wistfully of the working watermill he remembered from his childhood, intrinsic to the rural economy but doomed to end up as a museum piece.
Sarehole Mill – as picturesque as ever with its millpond and cobbled courtyard – is now run as a community museum by Birmingham City Council, and is open to the public in the summer. To hard-core Tolkien fans, who descend on Birmingham for the Middle-earth Weekend every May, dressed as Gandalf and other characters from the books, it has become a place of pilgrimage, along with neighbouring Moseley Bog, an area of ancient woodland that Tolkien used to explore with his younger brother, Hilary.
They would not be exploring it unsupervised in 2012, certainly not at the age of seven or eight, but if they did, they would find it little changed: a place of wonder and enchantment that will appeal to children of all ages. Dotted with mossy hillocks and bisected by leaf-filled streams, it is the kind of primordial forest that seems to take on a life of its own, with gnarled old oak trees so distinctive and individual they could be human. Was it any wonder that the boy who wandered through these darkly beautiful surroundings, heart pounding at rustling sounds in the undergrowth,High quality stone mosaic tiles. should have conceived of the Ents, the giant tree-creatures of Middle-earth?
The more you explore Tolkien’s Birmingham, the more richly suggestive it becomes. By the time Tolkien was 10, he was living in Edgbaston, close to the centre. It is an exclusive enclave today and, as you look at the BMWs parked outside Simpsons, a Michelin-starred restaurant, the world of Bilbo Baggins and his friends seems a long way away. But keep your eyes peeled and Tolkien’s Edgbaston – a sober Edwardian world on the outside, but rich in subtle contrasts – will come into view.
It does not take a literary scholar to spot the connection between the Twin Towers of Lord of the Rings and the two towers that dominate the otherwise flat north Edgbaston skyline – the soaring Victorian chimney of the Edgbaston Waterworks and Perrott’s Folly, a splendid red-brick construction, daintily svelte but rising nearly 100 feet into the air.
The young Tolkien would have walked past both towers as he stepped out with Edith Bratt, his future wife, on his way to Edgbaston reservoir, a local beauty spot. Edith was the great love of his life, but they had a troubled courtship – he was a Catholic and she was a Protestant, which, in conservative Birmingham, was as bad as a Montague falling for a Capulet. But love found a way, as in all the best novels. It was time for the next chapter in his life.
If it was Birmingham that inflamed the young Tolkien’s imagination, it was Oxford that gave him the intellectual hinterland to write his bestselling books. He was an undergraduate at Exeter College and, after serving in the First World War, got a fellowship at Pembroke College. It was there that he wrote The Hobbit in 1936. He later became Merton Professor of English Language and Literature, dovetailing a career as a fantasy novelist with an academic career as a leading expert in Anglo-Saxon literature.
J?R?R (“Ronald”) Tolkien was born in South Africa, but after moving to England with his family spent his formative years in Britain’s second city,A specialized manufacturer and supplier of dry cabinet,Installers and distributors of solar panel, first in the Hall Green area, then in Edgbaston. You get no immediate sense of Tolkien as you drive through Hall Green today – unless you count the Hungry Hobbit café, which, Brummie taxi drivers wolfing bacon and eggs apart, could be in Auckland. But keep your eyes and ears open, give rein to your imagination, and the pieces of a complex human jigsaw start to fall into place.
In the 1890s, when the Tolkiens lived in a cottage on what is now Wake Green Road, this bland suburb would have been the hamlet of Sarehole in Worcestershire, a sleepy rural community disturbed by nothing louder than birdsong and barking dogs. Right in the centre, like a stage prop, was a rickety watermill, dating back hundreds of years.
“Sarehole Mill dominated my childhood,” Tolkien wrote in 1968. “The old miller of my day and his son were characters of wonder and terror to a small child.” If you are looking for the inspiration for Sandyman, the crotchety miller in Hobbiton,Find detailed product information for howo tractor and other products. look no further. But his memories of the mill, if not the miller,Quickparts builds injection molds using aluminum or steel to meet your program. were rose-tinted. “It was a kind of lost paradise,” he said wistfully of the working watermill he remembered from his childhood, intrinsic to the rural economy but doomed to end up as a museum piece.
Sarehole Mill – as picturesque as ever with its millpond and cobbled courtyard – is now run as a community museum by Birmingham City Council, and is open to the public in the summer. To hard-core Tolkien fans, who descend on Birmingham for the Middle-earth Weekend every May, dressed as Gandalf and other characters from the books, it has become a place of pilgrimage, along with neighbouring Moseley Bog, an area of ancient woodland that Tolkien used to explore with his younger brother, Hilary.
They would not be exploring it unsupervised in 2012, certainly not at the age of seven or eight, but if they did, they would find it little changed: a place of wonder and enchantment that will appeal to children of all ages. Dotted with mossy hillocks and bisected by leaf-filled streams, it is the kind of primordial forest that seems to take on a life of its own, with gnarled old oak trees so distinctive and individual they could be human. Was it any wonder that the boy who wandered through these darkly beautiful surroundings, heart pounding at rustling sounds in the undergrowth,High quality stone mosaic tiles. should have conceived of the Ents, the giant tree-creatures of Middle-earth?
The more you explore Tolkien’s Birmingham, the more richly suggestive it becomes. By the time Tolkien was 10, he was living in Edgbaston, close to the centre. It is an exclusive enclave today and, as you look at the BMWs parked outside Simpsons, a Michelin-starred restaurant, the world of Bilbo Baggins and his friends seems a long way away. But keep your eyes peeled and Tolkien’s Edgbaston – a sober Edwardian world on the outside, but rich in subtle contrasts – will come into view.
It does not take a literary scholar to spot the connection between the Twin Towers of Lord of the Rings and the two towers that dominate the otherwise flat north Edgbaston skyline – the soaring Victorian chimney of the Edgbaston Waterworks and Perrott’s Folly, a splendid red-brick construction, daintily svelte but rising nearly 100 feet into the air.
The young Tolkien would have walked past both towers as he stepped out with Edith Bratt, his future wife, on his way to Edgbaston reservoir, a local beauty spot. Edith was the great love of his life, but they had a troubled courtship – he was a Catholic and she was a Protestant, which, in conservative Birmingham, was as bad as a Montague falling for a Capulet. But love found a way, as in all the best novels. It was time for the next chapter in his life.
If it was Birmingham that inflamed the young Tolkien’s imagination, it was Oxford that gave him the intellectual hinterland to write his bestselling books. He was an undergraduate at Exeter College and, after serving in the First World War, got a fellowship at Pembroke College. It was there that he wrote The Hobbit in 1936. He later became Merton Professor of English Language and Literature, dovetailing a career as a fantasy novelist with an academic career as a leading expert in Anglo-Saxon literature.
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