Bag End

• 1. The Hill At Hobbiton

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  Tolkien's watercolour painting The Hill: Hobbiton-across-the-Water shows the exterior and surrounding countryside of Bag End. The dwelling sits at the top of The Hill on the north side of the town of Hobbiton in the Shire's Westfarthing. Less-favoured Hobbit-holes appear lower down the slope in the same artwork. Tolkien made several pencil and ink sketches for these subjects before settling on Bag End's final location and architecture. His drawing The Hall at Bag-End, Residence of B. Baggins Esquire depicts the interior with 20th century fittings such as a wall clock and barometer. Another clock is mentioned in chapter 2 of The Hobbit. The barometer appears in Tolkien's drafts of The Hobbit where Cosimo Chubb bangs it with a large fat finger whenever he comes to call.

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• 2. Starting And Ending Points

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  Bilbo and Frodo Baggins lived at Bag End, a luxurious smial or Hobbit-burrow dug into The Hill. From there both hobbits set out on their adventures and return there for a while. As such Bag End represents the familiar safe comfortable place which is the antithesis of the dangerous places they visit. It forms one end of the main story arcs in the novels since the Hobbits return there. This also forms an end point in the story circle in each case. Tom Shippey writes that the name Bag End is a direct translation of the French cul-de-sac meaning bottom of a bag. He calls this phrase silly yet used in England to mean a dead end road with only one outlet. The journeys of Bilbo and Frodo have been interpreted as just such confined roads as they both start and end in Bag End.

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• 3. Tudor Homes And Iceland

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  Bag End was the real name of the Tudor home dated to 1413 of Tolkien's aunt Jane Neave in the village of Dormston Worcestershire. Andrew Morton wrote an account of his findings for the Tolkien Library regarding this connection. The scholar of literature and film Steven Woodward suggests Tolkien may have based his Hobbit-holes on Iceland's turf houses. Kostis Kourelis the architectural historian agrees with this assessment pointing to examples at Keldur. Tolkien stated I am in fact a Hobbit and scholars agree he enjoyed good food gardening smoking a pipe and living in a familiar comfortable home. Thomas Honegger argues that places have a critical role in The Lord of the Rings establishing the character of hole-dwellers who have a deep-rooted aversion against travelling outside the Shire.

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• 4. Matamata Film Set

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  Peter Jackson had an elaborate Hobbiton film set built on the Alexander sheep farm at Matamata in New Zealand for his The Lord of the Rings film series. It included a water-mill the Green Dragon Inn and several Hobbit-holes as well as Bag End in a small hill with garden. Jackson said of the set It felt as if you could open the circular green door of Bag End and find Bilbo Baggins inside. Chad Chisholm and colleagues reviewing Jackson's 2012 film The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey for Mallorn write that Jackson humorously has the rough and ready Dwarves bursting into Bilbo's neat little home and cleaning out his pantry. This provides a sort of constant comic relief to the dangers in the dark according to their review.

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• 5. Arts And Crafts Ideals

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  Johanna Brooke writes in the Journal of Tolkien Research that the character of Bilbo Baggins can be inferred from the architecture of Bag End. She suggests that Bag End is an Arts and Crafts building fitting into ideas of designer William Morris between 1880 and 1920. Features such as Bag End's panelled walls tiles and carpet could all have been manufactured by Morris & Co. The prosperous Hobbit-hole clearly indicates that Bilbo is middle-class. Its position at the top of The Hill demonstrates a physical and social elevation above other hole-owners since suitable sites were not everywhere to be found. Only the richest and poorest continued the traditional Hobbit-practice of living in holes while poor burrows had only one window or none.

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• 6. Contrasting Idylls

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  The historian Joseph Loconte wrote that Tolkien set up a contrast between Frodo's light and serene Bag End and Saruman's dark industrially destructive Isengard. Loconte likens this to C. S. Lewis's 1950 children's book The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe between Mr. and Mrs. Beaver's humble home and the White Witch's icy palace. Honegger points out a quite different contrast between Bag End as depicted in Tolkien's drawing The Hall at Bag End and his The Forest of Lothlórien in Spring. This shows no particular place but an airy glade in a forest filled with sunlight evoking a feeling of sheltered openness. If the Shire is a secluded remote petit bourgeois idyll then Lothlórien is a transcendental idealised idyll according to Honegger.

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