John Ronald Reuel Tolkien otherwise known as J.R.R. Tolkien is best known for his novels the Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings. Born in South Africa back in 1892, when he was three his mother took him and his brother for a visit to England. Sadly his father passed away whilst they were visiting and with no independent income his mother chose to stay in England and moved in with her parents in Kings Heath, Birmingham.
J.R.R. Tolkien was home schooled and a keen student, being able to read and write by the age of four. After his mother died at just 34, his guardianship was assigned to a priest, Father Francis and he ended up living in Edgbaston and attending King Edward’s Grammar School. He went onto study English Language and Literature at Oxford University, graduating with a first class degree.
At 21 he married, before heading off to the First World War and fighting at The Somme. He ended up contracting trench fever, caused by the awful conditions and a bacteria carried by lice. J.R.R. Tolkien was sent home in 1916 and spent most of the rest of the war re-habilitating in East Yorkshire.
Whilst he said that much of the Shire was based on the rural Worcestershire of his youth, and the mountainous regions from time spent in Switzerland, he also acknowledged that after time at the front during the war that the tranquillity of the Holderness Coast and the quiet agricultural landscape seemed in the East Riding was like “paradise” compared to his time in the trenches.
During his rehabilitation in East Yorkshire, he visited local villages, took walks in the countryside, wrote poems and developed two of his mythical languages which were used in his classic novels.
Tolkien was first based in Thirtle Bridge Camp which was near the village of Roos. According to the author of “Tolkien in East Yorkshire” Phil Mathison, his wife who had come to East Yorkshire to be closer to him, danced for him in a nearby hemlock glade. As there is no hemlock growing in the area it is likely to have been a similar looking plant – cow parsley and the Tolkien Society believe they have found the location in a wood called dent’s Garth near the local churchyard.
This event was later to inspire a story about Beren and Lutherian, a man who falls in love with an Elven princess in the Silmarillion, a similar story featuring in the Lord of the Rings.
After falling ill again he was then moved to an officer’s hospital near Hull on the Cottingham Road called Brookland’s and his wife stayed for a time in Withinsea. The house is now a fish and chip shop and has a blue plaque.
Whilst Tolkien recovered and was sent on light surveying duties on the Holderness coast and further a-field, he kept falling ill with gastroenteritis and was re-admitted several times to Brooklands Officer’s Hospital before finishing his convalescence in Blackpool.
Tolkien had time during his periods of good health to explore the East Yorkshire landscape and the famous Yorkshire Wolds with their dry chalk valleys, so couldn’t help but be influenced from his time getting back to nature. He actually features the Wold’s town of Wetwang in the Fellowship of the Ring.
By 1918, Tolkien was thinking about the next stage of his life whilst his wife Edith was pregnant. He started applying for Academic positions and in 1920 he was appointed Reader in English Languages at The University of Leeds, soon becoming a Professor and establishing the University as the UK leader in old Icelandic language and history.
While at Leeds he produced “A Middle English Vocabulary” and with another scholar produced a definitive edition of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, which became the academic standard for this work for many decades.
He spent 5 years in Leeds, the last 2 living at 2 Darnley Road, West Park just north of Headingley, where another blue plaque exists on his former home.
It is known that Tolkien would often take his family to explore the Yorkshire Dales during his time in Leeds and loved hiking around Malhamdale. His son recollects his father telling him in later life how the narrow V shaped valley with its famous waterfall known as Gordale Scar was his inspiration for Helm’s Deep.
We know he visited Whitby twice, sketching the town and was particularly interested in researching the town’s Anglo Saxon origins. Tolkien makes many references in Lord of the Rings to ruins and decaying evidence of a previously flourishing civilisation, maybe with the Anglo Saxon settlement of Straenhalsh (now Whitby) in mind?
But not far from Tolkien’s home in West Park, Leeds lies a beautiful area of natural woodland known as The Hollies. Set on a steep slope on the side of the Meanwood Valley, it is a place I used to often walk my dog whilst my daughter had netball training at Leeds Carnegie Sports College. J.R.R. Tolkien admitted to spending some of his spare time walking in the park with its towering oak and beech trees, with its alder lined becks, small wooden bridges and fern lined paths with mosses and lichens sitting on the large grit stone outcrops.
The land was donated to Leeds City Council after World War 1 by its owner William Brown in honour of his son who had lost his life in the Great War. It really is a magical place and I can’t help thinking when I stroll through the woods that it must have left a small impression on Tolkien in inspiring his vison of Middle Earth.
J.R.R. Tolkien left Leeds in 1925 to take up the post of Professor of Anglo-Saxon at Oxford University, a position he led for 25 years, before becoming professor of English Language there until 1959.
Lord of the Rings was published in 1955 to great acclaim and was voted Britain’s favourite novel in a recent poll, having also inspired the Peter Jackson blockbuster movies.
Whilst Tolkien did mention industrial Birmingham as inspiration for Mordor as well as other locations from his life which inspired his mythical vison, it’s hard not to believe that his time spent in Yorkshire both recuperating after the war in the East Riding and later living near Headingley whilst working at Leeds University, didn’t play some small part for the landscapes and locations appearing in his wonderful literally classic.
For more information on The Tolkien Triangle in East Yorkshire and The Hollies click on the links below:
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