“In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare, sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat: it was a hobbit-hole, and that means comfort.” ~ JRR Tolkien
When Peter Jackson decided to make a film (sorry, three films) based on Tolkien’s book, ‘The Hobbit’, he went back to the farm in New Zealand where they had created Hobbiton for the Lord of the Rings Trilogy. The original set had been a temporary structure and had included only the exteriors. Hobbiton II has become a much more grandiose and permanent affair. In 2023 they even added two ‘real’ Hobbit holes that can be entered and explored at leisure (n.b. tall humans aka ‘wizards’ should duck.)
For those of you who did not grow up reading the Hobbit, or have somehow missed the movies, here is a brief summary:
The Hobbit, or There and Back Again was published in 1937. Unlike its sequel ‘Lord of the Rings’, it was written for children, a fantasy adventure by English author J. R. R. Tolkien. The tale is set in ‘ancient time between the age of Faerie and the dominion of men’ and it begins in the ‘The Shire’, the rural homeland of Hobbits, set in a remarkably peaceful corner of Middle Earth.
‘Hobbits are – or were – a little people about half our height and smaller than the bearded dwarves’. The Hobbit in question is Bilbo Baggins, a ‘well-to-do’ and ‘respectable’ Hobbit whose family had lived ‘for time out of mind’ in the Shire. Bilbo is a sedate and sensible Hobbit, a wel-fed homebody who is happy to sit by his fire with his pipe. That is, until his sedentary life is rudely interrupted by an elderly wizard, Gandalf the Grey, and a company of bumptious dwarves, who are on a journey to reclaim the Lonely Mountain and all its treasure from the fierce dragon Smaug. An who have inexplicably decided that this small, unadventurous Hobbit is the perfect addition to their company. In the manner of all good fairy tales, they succeed in their quest, but not before encountering many adventures. Of course.
I have long wanted to visit Hobbiton, so when we finally settled on a time to visit New Zealand, I made sure to include a trip to ‘the Shire’. Serendipitously, it coincided with my birthday.
Hobbiton is only a two hour drive south of Auckland, near the town of Matamata on New Zealand’s North Island. The entry site includes an expansive car park, café, shop and bus stop. At our designated time, we boarded the bus with about twenty other keen Tolkienites and were driven through the farm to ‘the Shire’, an area somewhere in the middle of the property. Our guide, Aimee, an enthusiastic young lass from Lincoln (the English one) and was full of interesting stories about the creation of Peter Jackson’s Hobbiton set and its evolution into a tourist attraction. On a short video, we were welcomed to the property by the owner, Ian Alexander, and Peter J. himself.
For the next hour we rambled across the gentle slopes that comprise Hobbiton, with its wee round doors set into the hillside, a scattering of chimney stacks perched precariously atop, of which several were smoking. Miniature vegetable gardens, flower beds, orchards and ponds helped to create the image of a bucolic world in miniature. And eventually our path wound to the top of the hill, where sat Bag End beneath a huge, gnarly (fake) tree, a bench seat in the front garden on which rested Bilbo’s diary and his ‘enormous, long wooden pipe’, perfectly made for blowing ‘beautiful grey rings of smoke’.
The pièce de resistance, however, is the relatively new addition to Hobbiton, a pair of Hobbit Holes through which visitors may wander and explore the home of a ‘real’ Hobbit.
Oh! the delight of strolling down a rounded passage into a comfortable Hobbit hole, where no detail has been omitted, no comfort overlooked. Like a grand doll’s house, there is a real fire in the grate and the mantlepiece is topped with the Bagginses family tree. In the children’s bedroom is the cosiest of bunkbeds built into the wall. Circular windows look out over gardens and in the bathroom, a child sized copper bath. Down another passage to the kitchen and you step back in time to a kitchen before the fitted variety took over the world: a wooden table where someone has just finished baking pies, a wall hung with copper pots, a blackened range, a walk-in pantry filled with kegs of beer, boxes of vegetables, baskets of fruit, jars of pickles, and large rounds of cheese. On the dresser, a tray has been prepared for afternoon tea.
The whole tour is a joyous return to childhood fantasy; a world in miniature; the three dimensional recreation of a favourite book. The only thing missing – sadly – is the Hobbit himself. And yet, the whole time there is a feeling that somehow… if you don’t blink… just around the next bend in the path… you might bump into him.
Each tour is perfectly choreographed so that, despite the continuous flow of buses, one tour never overlaps another, and you feel that it is all being done just for you. At the end of the tour, we cross the bridge by the mill to reach the Green Dragon, Hobbiton’s own public house. Here we are offered a glass of ale, stout or cider – or ginger beer for those below the drinking age – from a kindly barmaid. If the sun is shining there is seating in the garden. If it is wet, there are plenty of comfy sofas and chairs within.
On arriving a little while later at our B&B, we were delighted to find DVDs of all the Peter Jackson movies, and watched with glee as Hobbiton came to life, filled, not with tourists but with real, furry-footed, jolly, diminutive Hobbits.