As a young boy J.R.R. Tolkien  lived for four years in Sarehole, then a rural hamlet south of Birmingham. After her husband had died in South Africa Mabel Tolkien rented 5 Gracewell, (now 264 Wake Green Road). This was one of a row of six recently built cottages. From their cottage Ronald and his brother Hilary could see the working watermill across the road. There were woods with an old sandpit, known as the Dell just up the hill and Moseley Bog was close by, behind the cottage.

Sarehole is clearly the inspiration for the 'Shire' in Lord of the Rings with the mill being near Bilbo's home at Bag End. The real life miller's son inadvertently lent his character to Ted Sandyman. Tolkien said that the 'Shire' was "like the kind of world in which I first became aware of things."

In Tolkien's Foreword to the 1966 revised edition of Lord of the Rings trilogy he says: "The country in which I lived in childhood was being shabbily destroyed before I was ten ... Recently I saw in a paper a picture of the last decreptitude of the once thriving corn-mill beside its pool that long ago seemed to me so important. I never liked the looks of the young miller, but his father, the old miller had a black beard, and he was not named Sandyman." 

Today Sarehole is a pleasant part of Hall Green some four miles from the city centre. Sarehole Mill remains a working watermill and museum. It is open to the public during summer afternoons and entrance is free. On special occasions the mill can be seen working and the Tolkien Society and Birmingham Museum organise Tolkien events - we will give details on this page, though the 2001 events have already taken place.

There is talk of a Tolkien Park and Sarehole Mill certainly deserves a decent visitor centre. What will visitors, inspired by the Lord of the Rings film trilogy, make of their pilgrimage to Sarehole? For sure they won't be 'ripped off' as there is not even a cafe to buy a cup of English tea! Sarehole Mill is just 30 minutes from Stratford-on-Avon and you don't need a tourism degree to predict exciting times ahead for Sarehole, the natural home of Tolkien.  What would Tolkien have thought of his rural idyll being overcome with camcorders!