Reading Tolkiens Shire as a Planned Community (Aharon N. Varady)

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Reading Tolkien’s Shire as a PlannedCommunityprepared by: Aharon Varady prepared for: Dr. Michael Romanos, School of Planning, University of Cincinnati (DAAP) WWW publication date: December 14, 2002, version 1.02

Version 1.03: February 7, 2002Added Title Frame with explanation of how to use footnotesAdded images to paper bodyJustified text

Version 1.02: December 14, 2002Added Image ReferencesAdded imageviewinhtml.cgi for dynamically viewing and resizing imagesSmall changes in introduction, added some footnotes concerning the romanticization of indigenous peoples, mythologizing/storytelling as religious activity of Tolkien...

Version 1.01: December 10, 2002HTMLified paperPublished paper onlineAdded more images

Version 1.0: December 2, 2002Paper completed, written in Open Office 1.0.1Paper printed on paperPaper reviewed by Dr. Romanos

Reading Tolkien's Shire as a Planned Community http://phobos.serve.com/planning/2002d-Fall/the_shire/tolkiens_shire.htm

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“... it is not for us to choose the times into which we are born, but to do what we [can] to repair them... “1

“I am not a ‘socialist’ in any sense – being averse to 'planning' (as must be plain) most of all because the ‘planners’,when they acquire power, become so bad...”2

– J.R.R. Tolkien

Introduction: the Shire, a ‘Planned Community’?

J.R.R. Tolkien's design of the Shire for his epic Lord of the Rings (LotR) may seem an odd if exoticchoice for an investigation of a planned community. First of all, the Shire is a fictional settingdesigned for the purpose of telling a grand story. Unlike planned communities such as Hygeia,Kentucky, which also only existed on paper, the Shire was not conceived with the intention that itmight be physically realized for human habitation. Rather, it was conceived as a settled region ofsome 21,400 square miles3 with a long fictional history of habitation; a community homeland whichhas been made comfortable and self-sufficient after many generations of habitation. The Shire is alsodescribed in maps and illustrations which lend a credibility and consistency to Tolkien’s fiction.

Unlike other planned communities, the author has had the liberty of a fantasist to not only create theplace and to populate it, but to invent all the environmental, social, political, and historical contextswhich characterize its habitation. (If Robert Owen had had such power, his philanstery at NewHarmony would certainly have been built).

The extent of Tolkien's invention is massive: the Shire is but asmall fragment of a greater plan, one that encompasses a wholeworld called Arda, with regions inhabited and in wasteland,comprehensive histories and languages for its peoples, andgeological and topological histories for its land masses. KarenWynn Fonstad, author of Atlas of Middle-Earth, explainsTolkien's methodology in world building as a summary to hisessay “On Fairy-Stories”:

...in order to make an imaginary land (and the story thattakes place within it) believable, the Secondary Worldmust have the ‘inner consistency of reality’.4 The more aSecondary World differs from our Primary one, themore difficult it becomes to keep it credible.

Tolkien did not wish to create a totally new SecondaryWorld. In an interview he once responded, “If you reallywant to know what Middle-Earth is based on, it's mywonder and delight in the Earth as it is, particularly thenatural earth.”5 ...so he took our world, with itsprocesses, and infused it with just enough changes tomake it ‘faerie’.6

This paper concerns itself with the land and peoples of a small partof this ‘secondary world,’ a part of the ‘natural earth’ a youthfulTolkien took wonder and delight in. In our ‘primary world,’ thiswas the rural village life and lands of Warwickshire, in the hamletof Sarehole in central middle England, at the end of the nineteenth

David Day's composite map of Arda

Karen Wynn Fonstad's Arda


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century. In Arda, on the continent of Middle-Earth, Tolkien calledthis land, the Shire.

The Shire is significant for planners and planning history becauseits idyllic description and its particular inhabitants represent notonly Tolkien's vision of an ideal place and people, it reflects alonging for the beauty and coherence of a fading agrarian worldsought by Romantic contemporaries of Tolkien. The challenge tothe Shire at the end of LotR should resonate with planners. In thefinal chapter “The Scouring of the Shire,” the Shire village,Hobbiton, is successfully defended against the sprawl ofunplanned development and pollution brought on by unsustainableindustrial growth. Finally, through the popularity of his writingsand their film adaptations, Tolkien has arguably and successfullycommunicated his vision to new generations anxious about theabuse of new technologies and the individual pursuit of capital andconvenience at the expense of rural and natural landscapes.

David Day's chronology of the historyof Arda from creation to the "FourthAge of the Sun."

The Shire, Hobbiton, and Bag-End

"Fairy-stories were plainly not primarily concerned with possibility, but with desirability. If they awakened desire,satisfying it while often whetting it unbearably, they succeeded.'' (Tolkien, On Fairy-Stories, p.40)

While reading LotR many years ago, Tolkien’s description of the many gardens, peculiarearth-sheltered dwellings, and easy access to old growth forest, made the hamlet of Hobbiton in theShire simply the place I wanted to live when I grew up. What are the characteristics of the Shire whichcould awaken such desire?


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The Shire is, first and foremost, the homeland of Hobbits, andhence, its characteristics are designed with its inhabitants inmind. On the surface, Tolkien describes the Hobbits as a kind ofpygmy race of humans, who average between two and four feettall, and who have fur growing down their ankles onto largeunclad thick soled feet. However, essentially the Hobbits arerescaled humans, idealized midland English farmers who arepolitically neutral, provincial and uncomplicated people withsimple wants, and “in touch with nature.”7

Hobbits have a history which predates the Shire. Thry originallyconsisted of three population groups. Each group had their owndwelling preference associated with the particular topography oftheir ancestral land. Fonstad writes:

The Fallohides, the most northerly, were woodlandpeople. The Harfoots, chose the uplands, delvinghomes in the hillsides. The Stoors apparently livedfarthest south and preferred the lowlands andriverbanks.8

It is interesting to note that the reason the Hobbits left theirancestral lands was because the nearby forest of Greenwood(soon to be renamed the Mirkwood) was becoming tainted by theevil influence of neighboring Mordor. In Tolkien’s world, evilreshapes the ecology of its surroundings much like wasteproducts in our world pollute the land surrounding industrialareas. The Hobbits, sensitive to natural cycles and systems,wisely emigrate to the land of Eriador, west of a great naturalborder, the Misty Mountain chain.

Once past the mountains and over a period lasting nearly 450years, the Hobbits settle several important villages (Bree andStaddle) and many more lost and forgotten ones. Later, a largegroup of Hobbits consisting of the three main clans travel furtherwest across the Baraduin River to the Suza (the Elvish name forthe Shire).9 Tolkien described its provenance in a letter to afavored reader:

The Shire is placed in a water and mountain situationand a distance from the sea and a latitude that wouldgive it a natural fertility, quite apart from the stated factthat it was a well-tended region when they took it over(no doubt with a good deal of older arts and crafts).10

The Hobbits initially obtain permission from the high king atFornost, the Dúnedain of Arnor, to settle the land between theBrandywine and the Far Downs.11 As Tolkien writes to his editor,

Ancestral homelands of the Hobbits east of the Misty Mountains (Fonstad)

Migration of the Hobbits to Eriadorand the Shire (Fonstad)

The Land of Eriador (Fonstad)


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Milton Waldman, in summary of the Shire’s history:

Their chief settlement, where all the inhabitants arehobbits, and where an ordered civilised, if simple andrural life is maintained, is the Shire, originally thefarmlands and forests of the royal demesne of Arnor,granted as a fief: but the 'King', author of laws, haslong vanished save in memory before we hear much ofthe Shire.12

The Prologue to LotR further states that “the land... had long been deserted when they [the hobbits]entered it” (Fellowship, 22). In this sense, the land of the Shire is not unlike the land the Rappitescleared for New Harmony or John Nolen for Mariemont: both were formerly cultivated and inhabitedby an earlier people now lost to history.13 The human occupation around the Shire was further reduceda little over thirty years after settlement when “the Great Plague... devastated all the peoples ofEriador.”14

The Shire (Fonstad)

Comprising 21,400 square miles, the region of the Shire is divided into four "farthings" and twoadjacent areas, the Eastmarch and Westmarch. The farthings simply divide the Shire’s particulartopographies and have no political function, as Fonstad describes: cooler, drier fields to the northfarthing; downlands to the west; sheltered fertile croplands to the south; and mixed lands to the eastfarthing consisting of woods, marshes, croplands and quarries. Westmarch, adjacent to the westfarthing was added to the Shire through a grant by the king of Aragorn.15 The Eastmarch, across theriver Brandywine and adjacent to the east farthing, is bounded by a greenbelt of the Old Forest. Infact, the Buckland of Eastmarch was conquered from the Old Forest due to hobbit populationpressures; "conquered" because unlike when forests are cut down in this world, trees fight back inMiddle-Earth.16


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Approximately 35 known settlements dot the Shire on Fonstad’smap. The majority of villages extend due west from the Bucklandalong major waterways and hill country, filling the East Farthing,and the Tookland in the east of the West Farthing. Important townsof the Shire include Tuckburrow, the seat of the Thain in theTookland; Undertower, the seat of the Warden, at the westernmostextreme of the Westmarch; Brandy Hall, the seat of the Master inBuckland; and Michel Delving, the seat of the Mayor in the WhiteDowns of West Farthing, noted for the impressive size andarchitecture of its smials (hobbit holes). A network of roadsconnects outlying hamlets to the Shire interior allowing for theeasy transportation of information (via a messenger service) andcommerce. The Great East Road bisects the Shire, and althoughDwarves and Elves are allowed to pass on it, Men are forbidden bydecree of the King of Aragorn. The Shire’s perimeter is protectedfrom worgs and men by the King’s Rangers.17

William Stoddard estimates that the Shire might support apopulation of some four million hobbits based on the relative bodysize of hobbits and the efficiency of their preindustrial agriculture.But following Fonstad’s description of the Shire as “well settled,yet uncrowded, with lots of Hobbits but plenty of elbow room,”Stoddard sees the real population being somewhere betweenone-third and one-fifth its potential, between 850,000 and1,400,000. I believe these numbers are still wildly exaggerated anddo not account for the traditional size of the medieval landscapeTolkien is emulating. If we assume that each village represents apopulation of less than 5000 individuals, and the towns with“official bodies” somewhat less than 10,000, then the population isprobably closer to 200,000 for the 35 known settlements, perhapsas many as 300,000 counting the population of hobbits in hamlets,villages and towns left unmentioned by Tolkien.

Like the Shaker communities, the economy of the Shire isagriculture, with pipe-weed (tobacco) a significant cash crop andsource of surplus wealth. Pipe-weed plantations are common in theSouth Farthing; it is there that the Sackville-Baggins family ofBilbo and Frodo have their tobacco farm. Stoddard infers that aredistribution of wealth in this clan-centered society occurs whenwealthy families give large birthday parties consisting not only ofgreat feasts but also extensive gift-giving. This economic feature issimilar to the potlatches of the Pacific Northwest Coast tribesalthough the custom is widespread in chiefdom based societies.18

The last king of Arnor vanishes four hundred years after first

Hobbiton Aerial Survey (David Day)

Barbara Stratchey's Map of Hobbiton

Tolkien’s illustration "The Hill,Hobbiton-across-the-water" (92)

Tolkien’s illustration "The Hill,Hobbiton-across-the-water" (98)


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settlement in the Shire. Soon afterward, the office of the Thain iscreated to organize protection against Orc raids and belligerentintrusions from the Old Forest. After the decree of King Ellesar ofAragorn protecting the Shire, the Thain, passed down byinheritance, becomes like most other public positions, largelyceremonial. Tolkien calls this system of government “halfaristocracy half republic”19 and it reflects his own political leaning,self-described as “unconstitutional monarchy,” an “anarchy(philosophically understood, meaning abolition of control, notwhiskered men with bombs).”20 Douglas Burger explains thissystem:

...since the hobbits are contented and prize peace andplenty, they lack the ambition to start wars. As Tolkiensays, "For a thousand years they were little troubled bywars" (Tolkien, Fellowship, p. 24), and as Frodo sayslater, "No hobbit has ever killed another on purpose inthe Shire" (Tolkien, Return, p. 352). Thus they need noarmy. They also have no real police — only the Shirriffs,who are more concerned with the strayings of beasts thanthe misdoings of the hobbits — not that the hobbits areby any means uniformly wise and good, but theirinfractions are all minor, like the spoon-snitching ofLobelia Sackville-Baggins and the trespassing of youngSancho Proudfoot in Bilbo's pantry. In fact, there are onlytwo governmental services in the Shire: the MessengerService and the Watch. With so little government, there isno need for governors, and the closest approximations tohobbit rulers are the elected Mayor of Michel Delving,whose duties are only ceremonial, and the Thain, nowonly a "nominal dignity" (Tolkien, Fellowship, p. 30).21

Besides having a “non-restrictive and minimal government,” theShire shares other agrarian characteristics. The clan or family in theShire is “the basic and dominant social unit.”22 The simplicity ofhobbit life can be measured by their joys and desires: living incomfort and plenty from the beneficence of nature and the earth’scultivated gardens and fields, smoking the prized Old Toby strainof pipe-weed, and giving gifts at parties. Hobbit life also exhibits acertain uniformity beyond the quaint dramas of rural life. Hobbitsare, as David Day writes:

an unassuming, conservative people, [judging] their peersby their conformity to quiet Hobbit village life. Excessivebehaviour or adventurous endevour were discouraged andconsidered indiscreet.23

Although there is tolerance for and alliances among the variousraces of Middle-Earth (such as the Fellowship), there are no placeswhere Elves, Dwarves, Men or Hobbits dwell together as onecommunity. Tolkien’s sense of place appears predicated oncommunal homogeneity, a uniformity in culture, values, andambitions.

Other characteristics of agrarianism appear to be absent: a

Hobbiton Hill (David Day)

Bag-End Underhill (Tolkien, 90)

Tolkien’s illustration "The Hall atBag End"

John Howe's Hall at Bag End

Floor plan of Bag End (Fonstad)


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fundamentalist religion, and a society lacking class distinctions.For all the detail Tolkien imbues his world with, religious traditionsamong his various peoples are noticeably missing, Hobbitsincluded.24 Present in the Shire, however, is a class structure –hobbits are certainly not uniformly poor. Tolkien names twelvewealthy hobbit families and contrasts the condition of their smials(earth sheltered houses) with the simple holes in the ground ofpoorer hobbits.25 Only Sam Gamgee, one out of the four hobbits inthe fellowship is ‘working class.’ Sam’s social mobility is onlyadvanced when he learns how to read from Bilbo Baggins. TheShire lacks a public educational system. Education exists and istaken for granted by wealthier families, and it is exercised in theirwriting of Wills, deeds of property and the management ofplantations in neighboring farthings, but literacy is not available toall hobbits.

The agrarian characteristic most obviously apparent to readers andviewers of the film adaptations of the Shire is the pastorallandscape and gardens of Hobbiton. Douglas Burger sums expertlyhow the natural world is interwoven with the social one:

The Shire is a peaceful, cultivated land. Here the simplehobbits "play their well-ordered business of living," andmost of that business is associated with the "rich andkindly" soil (Tolkien, Fellowship, p. 24). To the extentthat Shire occupations are ever mentioned, almost all areagricultural: hobbits are farmers like Sam Cotton andFarmer Maggot or gardeners like the Gaffer and SamGamgee. Even the officials, the Shirriffs, are more"haywards than policemen" (p. 31). As Tolkien says,"Growing food and eating it occupied most of their time"(p. 30). The towns themselves are interlaced withgardens. At Bag-End, Bilbo's garden comes right up tothe window,26 where he and Gandalf watch the"snap-dragons and sunflowers" glowing "red and golden"in the westering sun; and the nasturtiums virtually takeover the dwelling, trailing all over the turf walls andpeeping in through the round windows of the house (p.49). Also, it is in the very midst of Hobbiton where theGaffer grows his crop of "taters." In fact, the distinctionbetween village and country is scarcely relevant here, forhobbit homes blend harmoniously and unobtrusively intothe bucolic setting. Made of natural materials — thatchedwith dry grass and surrounded by walls of turf — theyare only a slight development of the ancestral hobbitholes, comfortable tunnels reaching down into the earthitself. Like the hobbit holes, several other images reflectthe hobbits' closeness to the earth, both literally andfiguratively. Hobbits are, says Gandalf, "tough as old treeroots" (p. 78), and surely it is no accident that Tolkienhas the old Gaffer specialize in root vegetables. Thehobbits' feet, being unshod, touch the ground; they preferto wear green and yellow, the colors of growth; andhobbit women are often named for flowers: Rose,Primula, Pansy, Lobelia, Camelia. In sum, nothing couldbe more quintessentially hobbit-like than Sam's visionwhen he puts the great Ring of power in the heart ofMordor: "At his command the vale of Gorgoroth becamea garden of flowers and trees and brought forth fruit"(Tolkien, Return , p. 216).27

The Party Tree and Commons(Fellowship of the Ring film [NewLine Cinema, 2000])

Hobbiton, Before and After theInvasion (Fonstad)


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Like the Garden Cities of Green Hills and Mariemont, Ohio,Hobbiton’s housing units are often clustered. At the top of The Hillis the smial of Bag-End, the luxurious hobbit hole of the Bagginsfamily.28 Below Bag-End, are other neighboring earth sheltereddwellings One of these, Number Three Bagshot Row, is occupiedby the Gaffer and his son, Sam Gamgee. A large open field andtree between the Row and Bag End is set aside and prepared forcommunity parties.

The importance and beauty of this vision is reinforced in the finalchapter of LotR, “The Scouring of the Shire.” In it, the heroesreturn to their homeland only to find the ecology and order ofHobbiton become the object of destruction of the invading forcesof Sauron. A quarry replaces both the clustered housing of BagshotRow, the community party area and gardens are destroyed, and allthe trees of Hobbiton have been cut down. Sandyman’s Mill,expanded to cover The Water to exploit more of its energy, nowalso pollutes it. The hedgerows delineating property lines havebeen broken, the green fields are brown, and the air chokes withthe soot of a gigantic chimney. As Douglas Glover writes:

It is not merely the occasion for an attack on the horrorsof industrial desecration – the fouling of streams, theremoval of trees, the monstrosities of modernarchitecture; it is also an account of the violation of thespontaneous order of the hobbits, the brutalisation of itspopulace, and their subordination to an external principleof organisation in which new laws are promulgated andenforced and power centralised in the person of ‘theChief’ and his machinery of repression, under whoseorders even beer-drinking and smoking are outlawed.29

This apocalyptic vision of the former paradise, is Tolkien's way of describing the IndustrialRevolution. Hobbiton was born from the same “anti-urban agrarian/romantic approach” as that of theGarden City Movement. Both Tolkien and Ebeneezer Howard sought a return to the pre-industrialvillage and the harmony and beauty of nature for its inhabitants. But Tolkien was not aware ofHoward’s activities, in fact, Tolkien took a rather dim view of planning, associating it with socialisttyranny.30 He was, however, a great reader of G.K. Chesterton and reportedly had memorized certainworks of his.31 Chesterton had outlined an alternative program to capitalism and socialism calledDistributivism which looked to the society and economy of the middle ages as a model for England.Distributivism advocates distributing greater power to ordinary Englishman by encouraging a widerdistribution of property and supporting small shop owners. The Distributionist League envisioned areturn from large industrial cities back to small English villages comprised of independent craftsmenand farmer landowners. Glover suggests that scenes such as that presented in “The Scouring of theShire,”

...owe something to the ‘backward-looking nostalgia’ typified in the Distribution of Chestertonand Belloc with its anti-industrial utopia of yeoman farmers and small craftsmen, thus supplyingcontent to Tolkien’s justification of ‘Recovery’ as a recuperative escapism, what he called the‘Escape of the Prisoner’. Once again it is the function of the writer to safeguard and disseminatethis aesthetic vision, the redeemability of the world from its present condition. ‘Recovery’ was


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Tolkien’s term for ‘regaining...a clear view’ of ‘things as we are (or were) meant to see them’,that is as radically different from the distortions introduced by ‘scientific theory’. This functionof fairy-stories allows us to retrieve ‘the wonder of the things, such as stone, and wood, and iron;tree and grass; house and fire; bread and wine’, and the ideal environment for this appreciation isa restored communal pastoralism.32

But any ‘backward-looking-nostalgia’ in the depiction of the Shire was not only the influence ofTolkien’s social outlook – both were the manifestation of profound experiences he had as a youth inWarwickshire. Tolkien came to England on holiday vacation from arid Bloemfontein, South Africawhen he was three years old. After the sudden death of his father, his mother struggled to findaffordable housing for herself and her two young sons in Sarehole a few miles south of Birmingham.Tolkien instantly found himself introduced to the homeland he had never known:

I was brought back to my native heath with a memory of something different - hot, dry andbarren - and it intensified my love of my own countryside. I could draw you a map of every inchof it. I loved it with an intensity of love that was a kind of nostalgia reversed. It was a kind ofdouble coming home, the effect on me of all these meadows... I was brought up in considerablepoverty but I was happy running about in that country. I took the idea of the hobbits from thevillage people and children. They rather despised me because my mother liked me to be pretty. Iwent about with long hair and a Little Lord Fauntleroy costume. ... The hobbits are just what Ishould like to have been but never was - an entirely unmilitary people who always came up toscratch in a clinch.33

Tolkien’s lovely pastoral Shire is, thus, a landscape of memory, a parallel to Sarehole andWarwickshire. The toponymy of the Shire, not surprisingly, is not very different from the place-namesof rural England.34 Of the hamlet of Sarehole, Tolkien further commented:

It was a kind of lost paradise. There was an old mill that really did grind corn with two millers, agreat big pond with swans on it, a sandpit, a wonderful dell with flowers, a few old-fashionedvillage houses and, further away, a stream with another mill. I always knew it would go - and itdid.35

Sarehole would always represent Tolkien’s childhood and his sense of security. He had to leave itbehind when his family moved away to Birmingham. Soon after that his mother passed away and hisbrother and he were orphaned. In later life, he expressed a bitterness in how Sarehole, in the fiftyyears since he had left, had largely been replaced by Birmingham’s sprawl. He describes the Sareholeof the 1950s in a letter to his publisher, that the hamlet of his memory was “as far away as the ThirdAge [of Middle-Earth] from that depressing and perfectly characterless straggle of houses north of oldOxford, which has not even a postal existence.”36

The irony is that while Tolkien wrote fairy-stories inspired by thedemise of wonderful Sarehole, the residents of the hamlet,anticipating the danger of sprawl, set to work to save it. A numberof owners added provisions in their wills to grant their land toBirmingham’s city council in perpetuity under the condition that theland could not be sold to developers. By the time Tolkien made hissad comments to Unwin, a good portion of Sarehole had actuallybeen preserved. Birmingham has since capitalized on the hamlet’spreservation and Tolkien’s fame as a way to attract tourists (seebrochure (PDF), The Tolkien Tour). Happily, Tolkien learned of thesuccess of Sarehole in the years before his death in 1973, althoughhe was too infirm to visit.37

bird’s eye view of contemporarySarehole


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Conclusion

"Lord of the Rings is a mythology, it is a fairytale, it's an adventure story, it never happened--except somewhere inour hearts. And yet there was Hobbiton in three dimensions, and smoke coming out of the holes where they liveunderground... and I believed." (Sir Ian McKellen, quote from official movie site: lordoftherings.net)

English-language sales for the Hobbit were higher than any other single work of fiction in thetwentieth century, and sales of LotR is not far behind.38 An investigation of the influence of hiswritings is beyond the scope of this paper, but it would certainly be interesting to learn whether theearth sheltered housing movement of the 1970s (often credited to the 1973 energy crisis) had as itsinspiration the hobbit holes Tolkien popularized. It would also be exciting to discover how manyfounders of eco-villages and sustainable communities had read Tolkien in the 1950s and 60s.

In fact, while researching this paper, I found one intentional community in Scotland which had namedtheir first housing cluster Bag End even though the site had no physical similarities to Hobbiton. Whatsimply mattered to the Findhorn Foundation was that the magic and spirit of Tolkien resonated withtheir interest in “living in harmony with intelligent sentient nature.”39

Inspired by the boyhood wonder experienced in the hamlet of Sarehole in the midlands of England,and dismayed with the philosophies of progress which sought growth through technology andindustry, Tolkien created a parallel world in which his readers might “regain a clear view of things”perhaps discovering that the “ideal environment for this appreciation is a restored communalpastoralism.”

The Shire is a planned region in a landscape of memory. Its appeal can be found in the green of ameadow, the curve of a hill, and the smell of fresh pipe-weed. The Shire is simply a cozy place whichGlover writes is “well-adapted to social needs without having to be mastered by a developedtechnology.” It is an idealized vision of an agrarian distributivist world.

Text References Image References

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Reading Tolkien's Shire as a Planned Community Footnotes http://phobos.serve.com/planning/2002d-Fall/the_shire/tolkiens_shire_fo...

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1 J. R. R. Tolkien, “From a letter to Amy Ronald” in The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien ed. Humphrey Carpenter, Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin, 1981. p.402. Tolkien is paraphrasing Gandalf'sresponse to Frodo's remark on the reappearance of the power of the Dark Lord, "'I wish it neednot have happened in my time,' said Frodo. 'So do I,' said Gandalf, 'and so do all who live tosee such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with thetime that is given us...'" (Fellowship, p.82).

2 Ibid, “To Michael Straight [drafts]”, p.235

3 Karen Wynn Fonstad ,in The Atlas of Middle Earth. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin, 1981. p.69. The size of the Shire is a little less than half the size of the state of Ohio. Throughout thispaper, I rely on the cartographic exegesis of Fonstad. Fonstad measures Arda's scale as threemiles for every one of Tolkien's "leagues". See her Introduction in The Atlas for more methodology.

4 Tolkien, “Tree and Leaf”, p.19, cited by Karen Wynn Fonstad in The Atlas of Middle Earth, p. xi

5 Resnick, 41, cited by Fonstad, p.xi

6 Fonstad, p.xi. Tolkien's motivation in creating this parallel world grew out of his early love andpenchant for creating languages. Each word has a historical conext. Hence, Tolkien developeda history for his language of the Elves.

7 Tolkien elaborates on hobbits in a footnote to a letter to his publisher, Milton Waldman ofCollins: “The Hobbits are, of course, really meant to be a branch of the specifically humanrace (not Elves or Dwarves) – hence the two kinds [humans and hobbits] can dwell together(as at Bree), and are called just the Big Folk and the Little Folk. They are entirely withoutnon-human powers, but are represented as being more in touch with 'nature' (the soil and otherliving things, plants and animals), and abnormally, for humans, free from ambition or greed ofwealth. They are made small (little more than half human stature, but dwindling as the yearspass) partly to exhibit the pettiness of man, plain unimaginative parochial man – though notwith either the smallness or savageness of Swift, and mostly to show up, in creatures of verysmall physical power, the amazing and unexpected heroism of ordinary men 'at a pinch'.”(Tolkien, Letters, “To Milton Waldman”, late 1951, p.158)

8 Fonstad, p.64 citing Fellowship of the Rings, p.12.

9 Ibid, citing Fellowship, p.13.

10 Letters, “To Naomi Mitchison,” 25 September 1954. p.196.

11 Fonstad, p.69. Tolkien’s world parallels our own medieval one. Ceding land to settle viasovereign grant was a typical medieval European convention, and was required for Englishcolonists of North America. Great plagues also affected the indigenous peoples of bothTolkien’s land and North America after settlement, but although the parallel exists, this wasprobably not intended by Tolkien.

12 Letters, “To Milton Waldman”, late 1951, p.158

13 The civilization previously occupying the lands on the banks of the Little Miami and theWabash is known by archaeologists as the Mound Builder civilization after their signatureburial mounds. In fact, the indiginous people of Arda, the Elves, same as the indiginouspeoples of North America, are imagined as living in perfect and complete harmony withnature. The Elves are the original hominoid species of Arda and hence have an ancient andpowerful connection to the earth. They live in a state of enchantment with nature, over andabove the hobbit's pastoral life in the Shire. It would be interesting to study how indiginous


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peoples are idealized in the different Romantic imaginations in other developing nationstoday.

14 David Day, A Tolkien Bestiary, NY: Ballantine, 1979. p.135.

15 Fellowship, p.18. Return, p.368, 378. cited by Fonstad.

16 “[T]he hobbits came and cut down hundreds of trees, and burned all the ground in a long stripeast of the Hedge. ...After that the trees gave up the attack but they became very unfriendly.”Fellowship, p.154. These events occurred some 400 years before the age of Frodo in the LotR.In contrast, Green Hills remains unharmed and unthreatened after the parking lot expansioninto the greenbelt of Winton Woods surrounding it.

17 Although the Hobbits have their own self-defence institution in The Thain (which wassuccessfully mobilized when the Orcs attacked the East Farthing when the Brandwine Rivericed over), the Shire is practically protected year round by the Rangers. Tolkien does notexplore whether this feudal-like patronage comes at any cost, say some agricultural tax leveed.

18 William H. Stoddard, "Law and Institutions in the Shire." Mythlore 18 (1992): p.5.

19 Letters, “Notes on W.H. Auden’s review of The Return of the King”, p.241.

20 Patrick Curry, "'Less Noise and More Green': Tolkien's Ideology for England," in Proceedings of the J. R. R. Tolkien Centenary Conference, ed. Reynolds and GoodKnight, p.129.

21 Douglas Burger.”The Shire: A Tolkien Version of Pastoral," in Aspects of Fantasy: Selected Essays from the Second International Conference on the Fantastic in Literature and Film ed. William Coyle, p. 149-151.

22 John M. Janson, “F. Planning History Summary” in the Study Manual for the ComprehensiveAICP Exam of the American Institute of Certified Planners

23 David Day, A Tolkien Bestiary, p.133

24 Tolkien appreciated the activity of his storytelling as an essentially religious one, andsubsumed his particular Catholic worldview into his mythology.

25 Baggins, Boffin, Bolger, Bracegirdle, Brandybuck, Burrowes, Chubb, Grubb, Hornblower,Proudfoot, Sackville, and Took.

26 Similar to the gardens of Hobbiton which come right up to the window, the carefullymanicured golf course of Wetherington, Ohio extends to the mansions of its residents.

27 Burger, p.151.

28 The author would like to investigate further whether the earth-sheltered housing movementoften credited to the energy crisis of 1973, was actually inpired by the, by-then-popular, worksof Tolkien. Patrick Snadon comments on my suggestion: “Tolkien may have predicted thesustainable/earth sheltered housing movement!? Wouldn't that be interesting? The versions ofthe Hobbit's houses in the first ‘Ring’ movie seemed to me to be a mixture of European ArtNouveau (Charles Rennie Mackintosh, C.R. Ashby and ‘English cottage vernacular,’ maybesome Victor Horta, etc., with a touch of American Arts and Crafts--Greene and Greene,Gustav Stickley, etc.”, from an email to the author, November 12, 2002. Compare Snadon'sreview to images of Bag (1, 2, 3) End from the New Line Cinema film Fellowship of the Ring(2000).

29 David Glover, "Utopia and Fantasy in the Late 1960's: Burroughs, Moorcock, Tolkien," inPopular Fiction and Social Change, ed. Christopher Pawling, New York: St Martin's,


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1984.p.206.

30 Tolkien in a letter “To Michael Straight, editor of New Republic”, January or February 1956(Letters, 235), saying: “There is no special reference to England in the “Shire” -- except ofcourse that as an Englishman brought up in an 'almost rural' village of Warwickshire on theedge of the prosperous bourgeoisie of Birmingham (about the same time of the DiamondJubilee!) I take my models like anyone else – from such 'life' as I know. But there is nopost-war reference. I am not a 'socialist' in any sense – being averse to 'planning' (as must beplain) most of all because the 'planners, when they acquire power, become so bad – but Iwould not say that we had to suffer the malice of Sharkey and his Ruffians here. Though thespirit of 'Isengard', if not of Mordor, is of course always cropping up. The present design ofdestroying Oxford in order to accommodate motor-cars is a case. (footnote: a reference to aproposal for a 'relief' road through Christ Church meadow). But our chief adversary is amember of the 'Tory' Government. But you could apply it anywhere in these days.”

31 Michael Foster, "The Shire and Notting Hill." Mallorn 35 (1997): p.46.

32 Glover, p.206-7, citing C. Wilson, Tree by Tolkien (London: Village Press, 1974) and C. P.Manlove, Modern Fantasy: Five Studies (Cambridge University Press, 1975)

33 From an interview with John Ezard circa 1966 printed in, “Tolkien’s Shire”, The Guardian Unlimited, Saturday ,December 28, 1991. Online at:http://books.guardian.co.uk/departments/classics/story/0,6000,596112,00.html Tolkieneventually discovered in himself the Hobbit he had always yearned to be, writing in a letter:“... I was born in 1892 and lived for my early years in 'the Shire' in a pre-mechanical age... Iam in fact a Hobbit (in all but size). I like gardens, trees, and unmechanized farmlands; Ismoke a pipe, and like good plain food (unrefrigerated), but detest French cooking; I like, andeven dare to wear in dull days, ornamental wastecoats. I am fond of mushrooms (out of afield); have a very simple sense of humour (which even my appreciative critics find tiresome);I go to bed late and get up late (when possible). I do not travel much...” (Tolkien, Letters, “ToDeborah Webster”, 25 October 1958, p.288)

34 Tolkien, Letters, “To Rayner Unwin”, 3 July 1956 p.250. Tolkien writes in regards to thepublisher’s request for approval on the replacing of English place-names with Dutch ones:“The toponymy of the Shire... is a 'parody' of that of rural England, in much the same sense asare its inhabitants: they go together and are meant to. After all the book is English, and by anEnglishman, and presumably even those who wish its narrative and dialogue turned into anidiom that they understand, will not ask of a translator that he should deliberately attempt todestroy the local colour.” Also note, Bag End is the name of the lane where Tolkien’s AuntJane lived.

35 Ezard interview with Tolkien, 1991.

36 Letters, “To Allen and Unwin”, 12 December 1955, p.230.

37 Ezard, 1991.

38 Patrick Curry, Patrick. "'Less Noise and More Green': Tolkien's Ideology for England," inProceedings of the J. R. R. Tolkien Centenary Conference, ed. Reynolds and GoodKnight,p.127.

39 John Talbott, Findhorn Foundation engineer, “Re: Research for Paper” in emailcorrespondence with author, November 14, 2002. John also sent wonderful pictures of theBag End neighborhhod in the Findhorn eco-village (1, 2, 3) and the Findhorn master plan. The village was built on land previously used as a British Royal Air Force base.

References: Tolkien's Shire as a Planned Community http://phobos.serve.com/planning/2002d-Fall/the_shire/tolkiens_shire_re...

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REFERENCES: Tolkien's Shire as a Planned Community

Burger, Douglas A. "The Shire: A Tolkien Version of Pastoral," in Aspects of Fantasy: Selected Essays from the Second InternationalConference on the Fantastic in Literature and Film. ed. William Coyle, 149-154. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1986.

Carpenter, Humphrey, ed. The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin, 1981.

Curry, Patrick. "'Less Noise and More Green': Tolkien's Ideology for England," in Proceedings of the J. R. R. Tolkien CentenaryConference, ed. Reynolds and GoodKnight, 126-38.

Day, David. A Tolkien Beastiary, NY: Ballantine, 1979.

Ezard, John. “Tolkien’s Shire”, in The Guardian Unlimited, Saturday, December 28, 1991. Available online at:http://books.guardian.co.uk/departments/classics/story/0,6000,596112,00.html

Flieger, Verlyn. “Taking the Part of Trees: Eco-Conflict in Middle-Earth,” in J. R. R. Tolkien and His Literary Resonances: Views ofMiddle-Earth, ed. Clark and Timmons, 147-158. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood, 2000.

Fonstad, Karen Wynn, The Atlas of Middle Earth. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin, 1981.

Foster, Michael. "The Shire and Notting Hill." Mallorn 35 (1997): 45-53.

Glover, David. "Utopia and Fantasy in the Late 1960's: Burroughs, Moorcock, Tolkien," in Popular Fiction and Social Change, ed. Christopher Pawling, 185-211. New York: St Martin's, 1984.

Hammond, Wayne G., and Scull, Christina. J. R. R. Tolkien: Artist and Illustrator, New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1995.

Howe, John (illustrator) and Sibley, Brian. There and Back Again: The Map of the Hobbit, New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1995.

Juhren, Marcella. "The Ecology of Middle-earth." Mythlore 76 (1994): 5-8.

LordoftheRings.net, official film site, the Saul Zaentz Company and Tolkien Enterprise under license to New Line Productions (2001).

Reynolds, Pat. "'The Hill at Hobbiton': Vernacular Architecture in the Shire." Mallorn 35 (1997): 20-24.

Stoddard, William H. "Law and Institutions in the Shire." Mythlore 18 (1992): 4-8.

Strachey, Barbara. The Journeys of Frodo. Acacia Press, Inc. 1992.

Veldman, Meredith. Fantasy, the Bomb, and the Greening of Britain: Romantic protest, 1945-1980. New York: Cambridge, 1994.

http://phobos.serve.com/planning/2002d-Fall/the_shire/illustrations.htm

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IMAGE REFERENCES: Tolkien's Shire as a Planned Community

Day, David. A Tolkien Beastiary, NY: Ballantine, 1979. arda_chronology.jpg

composite_map_by_day.jpg

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hobbiton_survey.jpg

Fonstad, Karen Wynn, The Atlas of Middle Earth. Boston, MA:Houghton Mifflin, 1981.

ancestral_homelands.jpg

arda.jpg

tolkiens_shire_index_htm_65a451ad.jpg

Bag_End_diagram.jpg

eriador.jpg

migration_to_eriador.jpg

the_shire.jpg

the_shire_map.jpg

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Hammond, Wayne G., and Scull, Christina. J. R. R. Tolkien: Artistand Illustrator, New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1995.

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The_Hill_Hobbiton_92.jpg

The_Hill_Hobbiton-across-the-water_97.jpg

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Howe, John (illustrator) and Sibley, Brian. There and Back Again:The Map of the Hobbit, New York: HarperCollins Publishers,1995. bagend_hall_by_john_howe.jpg

LordoftheRings.net, official film site, the Saul Zaentz Companyand Tolkien Enterprise under license to New Line Productions(2001)

bag_end_hall_from_for_2000.jpg

bag_end_hall_movie_1.jpg

bag_end_underhill_movie_1.jpg

bagend_hall_from_movie_2.jpg

hobbiton_PartyField.jpg

Strachey, Barbara. The Journeys of Frodo. Acacia Press, Inc. 1992. hobbiton_map_by_barbara_strachey_journeys_of_frodo.jpg

John Talbott, Findhorn Foundation Engineer, attachments sent in an email sent to author

Findhorn-Bag_End_1991_sm.jpg

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Findhorn-Bag_End_south.jpg

Findhorn-Park_masterplan.jpg

John Webb's JRR Tolkien Biography tolkien-graceland2.jpg

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http://phobos.serve.com/planning/2002d-Fall/the_shire/illustrations.htm

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Reading Tolkiens Shire as a Planned Community (Aharon N. Varady)