A last look at Tolkien's Dorset house

[solicitr]

Scheduled for demolition by developers who want to squeeze *two* new houses onto the lot.



You can see it from above (nicely hi-res) in Google Earth: Lat 50.7109° N, Lon 1.91499° W

[Voronwë the Faithful]

My goodness, what irony (in the worst possible sense)!

[Primula Baggins]

It's regrettable, of course.

But as an American I have to say I thought any house Tolkien lived in would certainly have one of those cute humped roofs and those adorable mullioned windows, with perhaps a flowering vine clustering round the round-topped door. This house would fit in fine in my 1950s-era suburban neighborhood.

[solicitr]

Maybe more like this, then- Tolkien's house at 99 Holywell (1950-53):



This could come out of Beatrix Potter's Tailor of Gloucester- it was, after all, built when the King was named James or Charles, and the baxk garden wall is part of the medieval city wall! JRRT gave this one up because the traffic at the nearby major intersection created more noise and fume thyan he could take.

But in the larger sense, Tolkien's surroundings never mattered to him much (so long as they were quiet)- he lived inside his own head.

[Primula Baggins]

Well, that does look much more like what I would have guessed!

Though certainly Tolkien could have written anywhere.

[ToshoftheWuffingas]

For a while there was bad feeling between Tolkien and one of his famous admirers, the poet W H Auden. Auden had visited Tolkien's Oxford home and had waspishly criticised his suburban taste to friends. Tolkien got word of this and wrote a letter in protest to Auden. I think Auden apologised and matters were mended.
To be fair, the taste in houses and furnishings may have been Edith's and he went along with it.

[Primula Baggins]

It would certainly be reasonable for him to indulge her taste in that, given the time and effort she must certainly have put in to manage things so he could work and write in peace.

[Jnyusa]

I'm trying to imagine fitting two houses where the one is now. Don't envy those later dwellers.

[Alatar]

Trust me Jnyusa, over here that would not be unusual. Most suburban houses here are built on sites that are 1/8th of an acre, substantially less than that in a city.

[Rowanberry]

Two houses?

They must be of old Dutch style then - high and narrow.

[truehobbit]

I'm trying to imagine fitting two houses where the one is now. Don't envy those later dwellers.

Actually, my first thought on reading the first post was, 'makes sense, there's ample room for two houses'.

It's regrettable that a house Tolkien lived in should disappear, but this one is particularly unsightly, and appears to me rather un-English in design, too. (Apart from the windows, which seem to be those horrifying unopenable ones you see frighteningly often in England. )

[solicitr]

Poole is a pricey resort community- it was in 1968, too- and what's happening there is pretty much identical to what's happening in many American beach resorts, like Stone Harbor NJ where my wife spent her childhood summers: as the value of the lots has skyrocketed, the original modest one-story bungalows have given way either to microdivisions, or to hulking mansions and condo complexes. The satellite imagery shows that in Tolkien's old neighborhood there are only a handful of similar small houses remaining, but lots of Architectural Digest monster homes (all plainly quite new).