Tolkien Trail

Iolanthe · Post by **Iolanthe** » Fri Apr 13, 2007 9:11 am

Reading through the Letters yesterday - I've been reading them on and off for about a year

- I came accross this little piece about his various homes:

Letter to Christoper Bretherton, 16 July 1964, from 76 Sandfield Road

...I typed out the Hobbit - and the whole of The Lord of the Rings twice (and several sections many times) on my bed in the attic of Manor Road. In the dark days between the loss of my large house in North Oxford, which I could no longer afford, and my brief elevation to the dignity of an old college house in Holywell.

That became hellish as soon as petrol restrictions ceased. But Headington is no paradise of peace. Sandfield Road was a cul-de-sac when I came here, but was soon opened at the end, and became for a time an unofficial lorry by-pass, before Headley Way was completed. Now it is a car-park for the field of 'Oxford United' at the top end. While the actual inhabitants do all that radio, tele, dogs, scooters, buzzbikes, and cars of all sizes but the smallest, can do to produce noise from early morn to about 2 a.m. In addition in a house three doors away dwells a member of a group of young men who are evidently aiming to turn themselves into a Beatle Group. On days when it falls to his turn to have a practice session the noise is indescribable....

Poor Tolkien! I wonder if the 'Beatle Group' even made the Big Time like The Beatles

?

marbretherese · Post by **marbretherese** » Fri Apr 13, 2007 10:24 am

I loved this letter when I first read it. As I'm sure Jonick will confirm, Oxford United moved away from Headington to a larger ground some years ago. Ironically Sandfield Road - at least late last Saturday afternoon - struck me as exactly the 'paradise of peace' which Tolkien craved (at least until three fans in a blue Corsa turned up and started waving cameras at number 76

). The bit about the 'Beatle Group' creased me up when I first read it - such disapproval expressed in a few brief words!!

Merry · Post by **Merry** » Fri Apr 13, 2007 3:48 pm

This is the type of comment that earned our favorite author the reputation of being against the modern world. I have to admit that I kind of agree with him! I think it's funny that most people would regard petrol restrictions themselves as hellish, but Tolkien thinks that life became hellish when the restrictions were lifted.

Thanks for the good quote, Iolanthe!

Airwin · Post by **Airwin** » Mon Apr 16, 2007 6:50 am

I finally had a chance to read Iolanthe's and marbretherese's reports on their Oxford day. I can only imagine how it must have felt seeing those places with your own eyes, yet while reading your reports I felt like I was there with you. Thank you so much for sharing your vivid descriptions and pictures of your trip!

Iolanthe · Post by **Iolanthe** » Wed Apr 18, 2007 3:57 pm

This will interest you, Merry. I'm sure you've read Tolkien's Letters (yes, I'm still reading them...

) but you may not remember this about Tolkien's first public reading of Smith of Wootton Major (before it was published):

The event astonished me altogether, and also the promoters of the series: the Prior of Blackfriars and the Master of Pusey House. It was a nasty wet evening. But such a concourse poured into Blackfriars that the Refectory (a long hall as long as a church) had to be cleared and could not contain it. Arrangements for relay to passages outiside had to be hastily made. I am told that more than 800 people gained admittance. It became very hot, and I think you [his grandson Michael George] were better away.

Letter to Michael George Tolkien, 28 Oct 1966

During the Oxford Tolkien Conference Merry and I visited Blackfriars after Father Pereira (one of the speakers) invited us. We wanted to see the 'orc' carvings in the Chapel, but he was so nice and generous he took us on a bit of a tour and showed us the Refectory which is quite impressive. If he mentioned Tolkien first read Smith of Wootton Major there I missed it. But I'm thrilled to have found it associated with Tolkien

. Another piece of the trail....!

Merry · Post by **Merry** » Thu Apr 19, 2007 2:33 am

He did mention it, Iolanthe--that's where I first learned it. I think I remember that JRRT attended daily Mass at Blackfriars and Sunday Mass at St. Aloysius, which would have been his parish. Also, didn't one of the Dominican friars have something to do with the publication of The Hobbit?

Anyway, it's a nice mental picture, isn't it, of crowds of people in the simple refectory, and then leaving there, and Tolkien mumbling away at Smith? I wonder if any of them understood it?

I should read the letters again now that I have been to Oxford!

Iolanthe · Post by **Iolanthe** » Mon Apr 23, 2007 9:55 am

I have a memory like a sieve, Merry, I've had another look at my conference notebook and I wrote a note about the reading in the back, along with several meaningless scribbles that I now can't make head or tail of! But that's the blessing of totally forgetting something, you can rediscover it all over again

.

Merry · Post by **Merry** » Mon Apr 23, 2007 3:37 pm

Ha! My memory also suffers thus. As a friend of mine says, we can hide our own Easter eggs!

Iolanthe · Post by **Iolanthe** » Mon Apr 30, 2007 8:22 pm

....just spotted your comment! There's a silver lining to every cloud.

marbretherese · Post by **marbretherese** » Tue May 08, 2007 12:29 pm

Here's a little teaser for those who may be interested. . . Jonick and I have just returned from Ireland, and during our stay - along with Iolanthe - we visited Castlecove in Co Kerry, where Tolkien took a holiday in August 1953. Iolanthe is preparing a report, but she's not back for a couple of days so if you are keen to know more you will have to be patient . . . I'll say nothing for now!!

Riv Res · Post by **Riv Res** » Tue May 08, 2007 2:18 pm

You tease!!

Merry · Post by **Merry** » Thu May 10, 2007 5:01 am

I am already jealous!

Iolanthe · Post by **Iolanthe** » Thu May 10, 2007 7:58 pm

I'm back (just like Sam but a bit taller....)!

Tee hee, here's another teaser. We found much more than we expected. Sherlock Holmes would be proud of us, we rock!

I promise to get my report up at the weekend with piccies

.

Iolanthe · Post by **Iolanthe** » Sat May 12, 2007 11:11 am

Iolanthe, Mabreterese and Jonick’s Excellent Adventure PART 2

Tolkien’s Hols
or
The Quest for The Misses O’Flaherty

[quote]In August 1951 Tolkien went on holiday in Ireland with his wife and daughter. They stayed first in Cork, having sailed there from Fishguard in Wales. After several days they travelled to the remote village of Castle Cove in the west part of Kerry on the north bank of the Kenmare River, near the point where it flows into the Atlantic. There they stayed in a hotel run by the Misses O’Flaherty; another sister or sisters ran the village shop-cum-bar. Their brother, who operated the local taxi service, drove the Tolkiens to Mass in the nearby village of Derrynane. Tolkien drew nine views of the Kerry landscape with special emphasis on the sky and weather; one is reproduced in Artist and Illustrator, fig.29 (misdated 1952).

The JRR Tolkien Companion and Guide: Reader’s Guide, Scull and Hammond[/quote]

This quote from the Ireland entry in the Scull and Hammond Reader’s Guide (and a rather good painting of Kerry in their art book) really caught my attention – Castle Cove and that whole area of Kerry is very, very well known to mabreterese and I. We have friends in the area and have travelled there with other friends every May and October for years – and latterly Jonick has caught the same addiction to the wonderful scenery, outstanding food and sitting in the car in a sodden waterproof as the windows slowly steam up while saying things like “Looks like it’s brightening up a bit in the west”.

What could be better, we thought, than paying another visit to Castle Cove and Derrynane on our latest trip over there, seeing if we could identify the ‘shop-cum-bar’ and taking a few photos. We didn’t expect to find a lot (especially the hotel) – just provide you with a bit of atmosphere, a touch of Blarney and show you all what a nice place it is to spend a week, why Tolkien loved Ireland and why he was proud to be an ‘adoptive Irishman’.

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Map of southern Iveragh Peninsular, Kerry
[copyright]Kerry Gems[/copyright][/center][/color]
So one fine (at least for a bit) day, we piled into our hire car and headed eastwards around the coast of the Iveragh Peninsular on the Tolkien Trail.

Ever since reading the ‘Ireland’ entry in the Reader's Guide I’ve thought Castle Cove was a strange choice of holiday centre. It’s described as remote and it’s certainly that, although it lies on the main Ring of Kerry. Really it’s not so much remote as practically non-existent. It really is only a few scattered cottages, a pub, a shop, a post office and a petrol pump. We’ve driven through it many times on the way to the much more attractive Sneem (more pubs, coffee shops, a view and – much more important – a large gift shop with a wide selection of woolly stuff) and not even really noticed it. It’s not near the best views or the best bit of coast but it is quiet and private. To be honest, until we went back I couldn’t even remember what it looked like - if you blink while trundling along you miss it. Its only claim to memory is the fact that two years ago mabreterese and I stopped there to rescue an elderly gent from a backwards tumble into a ditch and found ourselves labelled as 'Angels from Heaven'

, something we’ve been dining out on ever since (along with the fact that we destroyed the door of our hire car and unexpectedly saw a naked Frenchman's bottom all within a few hours. It was, as they say, one of those days...).

We parked in the church car park. Interestingly the Tolkien family preferred taking the taxi to another church described as ‘in the village of Derrynane’, and we can quite see why but….. more of that later. We piled out and started to walk through Castle Cove along the N70 – not as busy a road as you’d expect for the main ring-road through Kerry. We found what we thought might be the ‘shop-cum-bar’ very quickly – the very old and distinctive Black Shop Bar, established as a shop, amazingly, in 1605.

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The Black ‘Shop-cum-bar’
[copyright]Iolanthe[/copyright][/color][/center]
Instead of going straight in I dragged mabreterese and jonick off over the bridge and down a narrow rutted track in search of a bit of cove on the pretext that Tolkien might have walked there for a bit of a sea view. They should know better by now than to let me get out my 1:50 OS map.

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View from the rutted track back to Castle Cove
[copyright]Iolanthe[/copyright][/color][/center]
Living up to our misgivings, we found ourselves in a sort of slightly shabby mobile home commune where we lurked (not very nonchalantly) about on the sand trying to convince ourselves that we weren’t trespassing and wondering if an irate gang of mobile homers might suddenly emerge. If Tolkien ever did walk down there I hope it looked a lot better.

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Castle Cove cove which looks pretty nice from this direction
[copyright]Iolanthe[/copyright][/color][/center]
We trudged back up, talking about the fact that we had a few pictures to show you and not expecting to find much more. We popped into the Black Shop-cum-Bar for a quick look and after a feeble attempt at a bit of nonchalant lurking we approached a very nice young woman behind the bar who explained that the shop bit had now gone and the bar had been extended into it. Well….nothing ventured, nothing gained and now we had ‘come out’ in Oxford as Tolkien geeks anything was possible. We confessed that we were there because Tolkien had been there on holiday, staying with the Misses O’Flaherty and we understood they had owned a bar and hotel in Castle Cove. Bingo!!!! She told us that two of the sisters, Katherine and Mary Margaret had indeed owned the Black Shop before the present owners. Looking at the bar, if Tolkien didn’t down a few ales or the odd Guinness in its snug, dark interior I’d be very surprised!. A third sister had owned the hotel, which she gave us directions to just off the main road at nearby West Coad. There had been 5 sisters and a brother in all, they had never married and, with no one to inherit, the shop-cum-bar had changed hands and the hotel was now a ‘bit of a ruin’. The whole family was buried in the church yard above West Coad.

After thanking her profusely we positively danced out of the bar. This was beyond our wildest dreams – we never expected to identify where he stayed at all. Sherlock Holmes, eat your heart out! So we all piled back into the car and headed a mile and a half up the road to West Coad. After a bit of a red-herring and some good ‘turning a large car in a lane as wide as the 50th Anniversary Edition of The Lord of the Rings’ practice for jonick (sorry…J

) we found the right road and the ruined hotel surrounded by what looked like the Old Forest, but which turned out to be an overgrown garden. So here we present a Middle-earth-journeys Tolkien exclusive . The Misses O’Flaherty Hotel with its own air conditioning and cool views not only through the windows, but through the walls as well....Ta Da!!!!:

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The Misses O’Flaherty Hotel
[copyright]Iolanthe[/copyright][/color][/center]
Maybe it looked a bit better while Tolkien, Edith and Priscilla were staying there

?

We hacked our way around the overgrown garden with mabreterese bravely venturing a bit closer than me: “I can see into the kitchen!” “Great….are you sure it isn’t going to fall down and flatten you?’, and she’ll provide the all important interior shot. It must have been a very nice place at one time and still had an air of decaying grandeur clinging to it.

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Front door of the hotel
[copyright]Iolanthe[/copyright][/color][/center]
Flushed with this huge success (and after a detour to an Iron Age Hill Fort) we headed for the other place mentioned in the ‘Ireland’ entry, the Church in the ‘village of Derrynane’. Now… there is some confusion here in the Guide as there is no village of Derrynane with a church as such, just a scattering of houses. Derrynane is the house of Daniel O’Connell, the Great Irish Catholic Emancipator. There is a private Chapel but we were pretty sure that Tolkien didn’t go to Mass there but in the village of Caherdaniel which is just above Derrynane. It does have a church and there are no other churches in the immediate area. Although the hotel is nearer to Castle Cove, Caherdaniel is a much nicer place – a pretty, proper village, with more pubs and a walk down to beautiful coves, the gardens of the Derrynane Estate and Derrynane House itself which is open to the public. There are also wonderful walks beside the sea and through woodland.

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The beach at Derrynane
[copyright]Iolanthe[/copyright][/color][/center]
We think it’s entirely possible that an interest in Daniel O’Connell and a desire to see Derrynane influenced where they stayed in Kerry. If you were going to taxi yourself somewhere nice from Castle Cove it would be there. It’s an area we love and know well and the Tolkiens must have enjoyed it there hugely.

By now the weather was starting to look very threatening so we headed into the church, which is a nice, neat serviceable building, possibly built 1910-1930ish from our guess.

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The church at Caherdaniel
[copyright]Iolanthe[/copyright][/color][/center]
I would have lit a candle for the Professor but there were no lit candles or matches to get a light from. But there were electric ‘tea-lights’ which you could turn on by paying a Euro and pressing a button. I pressed a button for Tolkien but I can only guess what he would have made of that…….

To round our expedition off we bundled ourselves into the nearby Blind Piper, full of inglenook fireplaces, old beams and the smell of burning peat for a nice cuppa. Right up Tolkien’s street but I rather think he had the ale.

Merry · Post by **Merry** » Sat May 12, 2007 2:44 pm

Oh, my, you all are intrepid! What a great piece of sleuthing! I can indeed see Tolkien enjoying that area immensely. (I'm not sure about Edith and Priscilla, though!) Shame about the old hotel and the electric tea lights.

I suppose I've thought that Tolkien spent his holidays traipsing about with CSL, but maybe that had started to ebb by 1951. Do you suppose that Edith went on long hikes?

Many thanks for your valuable research and for sharing your wonderful photos with us!