View from the west looking east along the Yew Avenue to the Church. It is in this period of ever increasing claim-staking for inspiration that it is appropriate to draw attention to a neglected, but genuine Tolkien inspiration: Roos and the surrounding East Yorkshire countryside. These include the Burren in Ireland, Ethiopia in Africa and even an area of America. Stonyhust College is not a singular example, new claims have been proliferating more swiftly than Farmer Maggot’s mushrooms. Yes, Tolkien visited Stonyhurst College several times after 1946, but by that time his writing had reached the Minas Tirith chapters, so to claim his visits inspired his depiction of the Shire appear rather disingenuous. Therefore the alleged inspiration of Buckleberry Ferry from the one at Hacking Hall would appear to be absolutely non-existent. The professor would have had no reason to visit Stonyhurst before his son’s arrival there, and his first documented visit to Stonyhurst appears to have been on 25th March 1946 (5). John Tolkien did not arrive at Stonyhurst to study for the priesthood until several months after May 1940. Christopher Tolkien’s work on his father’s original drafts in The Return of the Shadow show that the ‘Second Phase’ of The Lord of the Rings in which Buckleberry Ferry is first mentioned by name was in existence by October 1938 (4). They are bolder in respect of the ferry at Hacking Hall and suggest this “may have provided the inspiration for Buckleberry Ferry in the book” (3). The leaflet hints that the river Shirebourn and that Shire Lane in Hurst Green may be connected to The Shire in Tolkien’s books. Visit Lancashire, the Lancashire tourist board, has produced a classy authoritative-seeming Tolkien trail leaflet which makes much of Stonyhurst College’s genuine Tolkien associations. A more complicated problem arises when places known to have had a late connection to Tolkien are being advertised as being an inspiration for his writings. However, there is no proof that Tolkien ever saw them before he wrote The Hobbit, and he never even refers to them after it was published. Puzzlewood is not alone, similarly Kinver Edge in Staffordshire has some remarkable picturesque rock houses, which have been promoted by some, but not the National Trust, as the original of hobbit holes. There is not even an entry for Gloucestershire in the whole of Hammond & Scull’s exhaustive Reader’s Companion. Nowhere in any of the professor’s published writings or letters does he actually mention visiting Puzzlewood, and on further investigation there is no evidence he even visited the Forest of Dean of which Puzzlewood is a part. However, this statement does not hold up to scrutiny. Tolkien makes an unnamed reference to the mill in the foreword to “The Lord of the Rings.”įor instance, the beautiful and ancient Puzzlewood in the Forest of Dean has recently started to market itself by claiming “JRR Tolkien is reputed to have taken his inspiration for the fabled forests of Middle-earth from Puzzlewood” (2). Sarehole Mill on the outskirts of Birmingham. However, a more pernicious aspect of tourism is also beginning to rear its head locations which have only a tangential Tolkien connection, or in extreme cases with absolutely no link to the author are attempting to jump on the tourist bandwagon. This is an invaluable resource for those wishing to visit all the genuine sites associated with Tolkien in the area in which he grew up. In April this year Birmingham produced a new Tolkien Trail leaflet, which recommends visits to Sarehole Mill, Moseley Bog, the houses where Tolkien once lived, and the places he worshipped. The tourist industry is now galvanising its resources and offering dedicated Tolkien Tours. For several decades Tolkien’s readers have been making private pilgrimages to Oxford posing for photographs outside one of his residences visiting the various colleges at which he studied, or where he later became a tutor and lecturer paying their respects at his graveside, or even dropping in to ‘The Eagle and Child,’ one of his favourite pubs, for a drink. It should therefore come as no surprise that there is such a thing as a Tolkien tourist industry. It was estimated that in 2013 tourism was “worth £106bn to England’s economy”(1). Tourism is an important source of income for any city, region, or country. Posted by Michael Flowers at 12:02 on 11 August 2014 The Eagle and Child, Oxford.
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