The Lord of the Rings

Middle-earth is invented, so this map holds only the documented real-world places Tolkien drew on: the West Midlands countryside of his Birmingham boyhood behind the Shire, the West Country hills and caves he lent to Rohan and Helm's Deep, and, far off the map, the alpine valley and the Great War battlefield that fed Rivendell and the Dead Marshes.

Frodo Baggins

Sarehole Mill, Birmingham

The Shire

The Shire is the green, unbothered homeland the hobbits carry with them and long to return to, a place of mills, lanes and ordinary comfort set against the world's danger. Tolkien traced its feel directly to the countryside around this water mill, where he played as a small boy before the city grew over it. The mill still stands as a museum on the River Cole.

Book 1, 'A Long-expected Party'

inspired by This is a real place that inspired the invented setting, not a location in the book. Tolkien lived beside Sarehole Mill in Hall Green from about 1896 to 1900, and repeatedly named this rural corner of his boyhood as the model for the Shire and Hobbiton.

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