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Middle-Earth Tours
Tour 2: The Places of Middle-Earth
Hobbiton
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The Hill: Hobbiton-Across-the Water, by J. R. R. Tolkien |
All Hobbits had originally lived in holes in the ground, or so they believed, and in such dwellings they still felt most at home; but in the course of time they had been obliged to adopt other forms of abode. Actually in the Shire in Bilbo's day it was, as a rule, only the richest and the poorest Hobbits that maintained the old custom. The poorest went on living in burrows of the most primitive kind, mere holes indeed, with only one window or none; while the well-to-do still constructed more luxurious versions of the simple diggings of old. But suitable sites for the large and ramifying tunnels (or smials as they called them) were not everywhere to be found; and in the flats and the low-lying districts the Hobbits, as they multiplied, began to build above ground. Indeed, even in the hilly regions and the older villages, such as Hobbiton or Tuckborough, or in the chief township of the Shire, Michel Delving on the White Downs, there were now many houses of wood, brick, or stone. --FotR, Prologue, "Concerning Hobbits"
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image from the Cannes film booklet available on the official movie site |
Downtown Hobbiton, an image
from the official movie site |
...And there in that pleasant corner of the world they plied their well-ordered business of living, and they heeded less and less the world outside where dark things moved, until they came to think that peace and plenty were the rule in Middle-Earth and the right of all sensible folk....
--FotR, Prologue, "Concerning Hobbits" |
Black Riders in the Shire, by
John Howe |
Black Rider and the Gaffer, by
Stephen Hickman |
concept art from the first version
of the official movie site |
Full-size versions of these pictures are on display at Rolozo Tolkien, the official LotR movie site, and theonering.net.
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