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In the Valley of the Hobbits

By Paul Edwards

An interesting literary controversy has broken out in England over just which region inspired Tolkien to write Lord of the Rings.

The author never publicly referred to the source of his inspiration, beyond a scanty allusion in the foreword to an edition of his works, but anyone who has read the books or seen the film should have little problem in identifying the true Middle-earth.

The contestants in one corner are the ordinary, featureless suburbs of Birmingham, that ordinary, featureless city in England’s industrial heartland.  In the other corner is the Forest of Bowland, where magic lies at every bend of the shining rivers.

It may well be that the gothic landscapes of Lord of the Rings are pure invention but it seems reasonable to deduce that the author developed them from his visits to the gentle and little-known part of northern England, where he wrote thousands of words and enjoyed many a pint of real ale.

The Forest of Bowland strides the hilly border between Lancashire and Yorkshire.  It is a place of ancient manor houses, silver streams, gnarled trees, hidden valleys and distant peaks.  This is the mirror image of Tolkien’s Shire.

Tolkien frequently visited Bowland in the 1940s when his eldest son John was studying for the priesthood at Stonyhurst, the former Jesuit seminary that is now perhaps the world’s leading Roman Catholic boarding school. It is known that he wrote much of his great work during his lengthy stays here.

Almost certainly Tolkien framed his Hobbiton from Hurst Green, a lovely little village of mellow stone just a few minutes’ walk from Stonyhurst.  The woods around today’s Mitton Hall were surely adapted by the author as the Old Forest; his Bucklebury Ferry across the Brandywine River just has to be the spot where in Tolkien’s day the Hacking Boat took passengers across the Ribble River.

Tolkien’s Brandywine Bridge carried the Great East Road across the river, and in his works dwarves crossed the bridge on their way to the mines in the Blue Mountains.  Today a modern bridge crosses the Hodder River, and close by is the semi-ruined Cromwell’s Bridge, also known as the Devil’s Bridge.  It’s easy to imagine grimy little dwarves returning across this ancient structure.

This is a green and pleasant land, its cattle pastures still under-populated after the recent ravages of foot and mouth disease.  There are three rivers – the Hodder and Calder joining the larger Ribble, which runs over gravel beds past Roman ruins at Ribchester before flowing into the Irish Sea beyond Preston.

Bowland is the exact centre of the United Kingdom, confirmed by a plaque on a telephone box at Dunsop Bridge. It was unveiled in 1992 by Sir Ranulph Fiennes, famous explorer and father of film stars. Thus, it is literally Britain’s Middle-earth.

Writing the Rings trilogy and accompanying works took many years, during which Tolkien worked as a lecturer at Oxford. You won’t find much of the Shire and Middle-earth in the dreaming spires of the university city where he wrote much of his opus, or in the bourgeois suburbs of Birmingham.

But up here in Bowland where the two counties meet there are villages and hamlets dating back to Saxon times, with names to amuse and inspire the author – Little Town, Bashall Eaves, Chipping and Old Langho. In the higher country there are names such as Wolfhole Crag, Hanging Stones and Good Greeve. Without change they could drop straight into a desperate episode of the Hobbits’ travails.

The district is not on the tourist thoroughfares, which tend to head straight from London to York and Edinburgh or wander through the Cotswolds, Chester and the Lake District.  Although the M6 motorway is only 20 kilometres to the west, the bluebell woods of Bowland see few of the millions of tourists who visit Britain each year.

Steve Alcock is managing director of the Shireburn Arms in Hurst Green, where Tolkien often enjoyed the beer while visiting Stonyhurst.  Built in 1679, the hotel is one of three in ‘Hobbiton’ – the Bayley Arms and the Punchbowl being also within strolling distance.

From the higher points in this quintessential English village you can see distant hills – Ward’s Stone in the Forest of Bowland, Longridge Fell to the south and Pendle Hill to the east, in the direction of Tolkien’s Crack of Doom.  Pendle was the scene of witchhunts in the early 17^th century and the alleged witches were hanged at Lancaster.  The horror of this savage miscarriage of justice doubtless impressed the author.

“Tolkien has many connections with this district,” Alcock says.  “He liked to drink in this hotel while visiting his son at Stonyhurst. Several years later another son – Michael – taught at the college and the old man persuaded him to plant a little wood near the house where he lived.

“Some of the older people remember the connection, and it’s amazing how their memory has improved with the release of the film.”

Resident Tolkien expert is Jonathan Hewat, who teaches English and history at the Stonyhurst preparatory school.  He has no doubt that the author set many episodes in the district surrounding the school, and has charted a Tolkien Walk through the woods and along the riverbanks.

The nearest town is Clitheroe, across the Ribble at Edisford Bridge.  High above the town is the battered keep of a Norman castle, and from this vantage point the whole of Tolkien’s Shire seems to come into view.

One of the town’s significant attractions is Cowman’s butcher shop, offering a bewildering range of almost 60 sausages, including turkey, venison and wild boar – just the grub for a hungry little Hobbit on a journey to faraway lands.

From Clitheroe it’s a matter of minutes to the places where the rivers join, almost identical to the confluence of Tolkien’s Brandywine, Stockbrook and The Water. Downstream, at Deephallow, the writer made the Shirebourn River join the Brandywine.

This is where Hacking Boat used to cross the Ribble.  It was running in Tolkien’s day, but has since been replaced by bridges downstream and upstream – bridges carrying roads that meander through hay meadows, passing by million-dollar barn conversions and Tudor manor houses.

One of these stone-mullioned mansions is Hacking Hall, thought to be almost 500 years old.  It fits Tolkien’s description of Brandy Hall.  Close by is New Lodge, his probable inspiration for the house of Tom Bombadil, who must have looked quite a treat in his bright blue jacket and yellow boots.

Tolkien stayed at New Lodge while visiting his eldest son, and in a sketch of the garden depicted beans climbing up stakes – identical to Bombadil’s own vegie patch where he played host to Frodo, Merry, Pippin and Sam as they started out on their quest.

The Hobbits were heading for the Prancing Pony Inn, where they met many Bree-landers.  Tolkien describes the walls of stone that marked the way to lovely Rivendell; similar walls line today’s twisting roads and enclose the old pastures that run high up towards the grouse moors of Bowland.

There is an old and isolated inn that could be the Prancing Pony. It appears like a dream on the road to the moorland pass known as the Trough of Bowland.  The Inn at Whitewell dates back to the early 1300s and has eight kilometres of fishing rights along the Hodder. Guests may fish for salmon, trout, grayling and sea trout.

The Royal Family owns most of the land around here, and it has been reported in a biography by Sarah Bradford that if and when the Queen decides to hand over to Charles, she will spend much of her retirement in Bowland.

Browsholme Hall (pronounced Broozem) is close by.  It has been the country seat of the Parker family since 1507. Now keen to capitalise on their asset, they are touting it as a film location and corporate hospitality centre.  Said to be occasionally open to the public, it never has been when I’ve been there.

The Parkers have a relic that – so the story goes - must never be seen by anyone other than a family member.  It’s a human skull, which, if exposed to strangers, will bring doom to the family.  Another legend says Parker deaths will be foretold by the appearance of a white horse in the mansion’s grounds.  Superb material for a student of history and writer of epic fantasy!

The entire district has been designated an area of outstanding natural beauty under the National Parks Act, and almost 20,000 hectares defined as ‘open country’.

Above the wooded valleys are wild tracts of open moorland and peat bogs.  Rock monoliths break through the surface, and there are caves where Neolithic remains have been found.  Just the kind of place where the evil, slimy Gollum would lurk to capture the ring.

At the centre of this little world is Stonyhurst, a world famous Roman Catholic boys’ boarding college where two of the author’s sons spent many years. The magnificent buildings are set in extensive parkland with two huge ponds that were excavated in 1696.

The college houses a wonderful museum collection including a 7th century Gospel of St. John. There’s also the Book of Hours that Mary Queen of Scots carried to her chopping-block execution. Oliver Cromwell stayed here in 1648 and allegedly slept on a table because he didn’t want to be assassinated in bed. Makes sense.

The college’s literary connections extend beyond Tolkien. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, creator of Sherlock Holmes, is among many famous ex scholars of the college, and Stonyhurst features in his novel The Hound of the Baskervilles. 

The school now houses a Tolkien library and study centre.

Peter Jackson’s film trilogy adapted from Tolkien’s works was shot in New Zealand, where mountains, glaciers and lakes offer topographical challenges to the Company of the Ring (and visual splendours to the moviegoer) that Bowland cannot match.

But the author’s descriptions of the Shire, Hobbiton, Rivendell and other locations are mirrored in the view from a window in the upper gallery of the college, where Tolkien wrote episodes of The Fellowship of the Ring.

It is a logical flight of fancy to transform the slopes of Kemple End to Tolkien’s Woody End and the Green Hill Country. The Misty Mountains beyond Rivendell could well be the high peaks of Bowland Forest. From their summits there are views extending to the Welsh mountains that would stimulate any fantasy writer.

Now consider the secondary claim for the location of Tolkien’s works – the flat, suburban housing estates south of Birmingham where he went to school and spent part of his childhood. The author himself alludes to this place in the foreword to the one-volume edition of Lord of the Rings.

“The country in which I lived in childhood was being shabbily destroyed before I was ten… I saw in a paper a picture of the last decrepitude of the once thriving corn-mill beside its pool that long ago seemed to me so important.”

This was Sarehole Mill in Birmingham, now a museum.  Doubtless his childhood memories were summoned when he started to write his epic, but at Sarehole there are no mountains, rivers, forests or hidden valleys – no inspiration and no magic.

The Birmingham claimants contend that the city’s waterworks building inspired Tolkien’s Twin Towers, the great edifices of Minas Morgul and Minas Tirith.  They’ll have to do better than that to convince me.

It is difficult to imagine Goldberry’s golden voice echoing through the workaday streets of Birmingham, but among the hills and dales of Bowland she would be matched by meadowlarks and songthrushes.

And Lothlorien – how could that be placed in the grim suburbs of any city? 

Legolas describes the mystical land of Lothlorien: “That is the fairest of all the dwellings of my people.  There are no trees like the trees of that land. For in the autumn their leaves fall not, but turn to gold … my heart would be glad if I were beneath the eaves of that wood, and it were springtime.”

It would seem that Legolas was describing the leafy valleys of Bowland, where the leaves do turn to gold in autumn.  However, they then fall in the usual fashion. 

Okay, so it’s not Lothlorien – but it’s the next best thing.

·        Bowland Forest is north of the Ribble River in Lancashire. Comfortable five-hour drive from central London via the M40, M6 and A59. One hour from Manchester.

·        Tolkien library and study centre: www.tolkienlibrary.com

·        Ribble Valley Tourism: http://www.ribblevalley.gov.uk/

·        Shireburn Arms, Hurst Green: www.shireburn-hotel.co.uk

·        The Inn at Whitewell tel (01200) 448222

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