Tolkien

wsmith · Post by **wsmith** » Wed 21 Mar, 2007 5:25 pm

D'you ever get the feeling, wandering around the middle of Leeds, that you are suddenly out in the middle of the countryside, or have slipped back a couple of hundred years?

gothic · Post by **gothic** » Fri 23 Mar, 2007 3:13 am

yeah there is few places i've been like miggie woods one minute your in a council estate the next middle of nowhere. there's wortley my old school on fawcett lane (newcliff) and it felt like you where back a few hundered years and all you could see was fields and trees.

gothic · Post by **gothic** » Fri 23 Mar, 2007 3:14 am

oh yeah where did you take that photo becuse it looks vaugly famular! (sorry for the spelling!!)

munki · Post by **munki** » Fri 23 Mar, 2007 9:32 am

Off the back of Cliff Road - the weird area of ginnels & streets that don't really meet up north of Hyde Park Corner, in between Woodhouse Lane & the Ridge. There are some fantastic places up there, & it all feels quite 'Secret', cause until you have worked out where all the ginnels end up, none of the streets really go anywhere!

pid · Post by **pid** » Fri 23 Mar, 2007 10:32 am

there is a little fenced off area up there munki called "dagmar" which is just trees and wild plants and i have heard stories that j.r.r. tolkien used to spend quiet time there whilst teaching ? at the university . could he have been meditating on middle earth whilst smoking his pipe just off woodhouse ridge ? can anyone shed a bit more light on this or am i talking a load of rhubarb ?

Dave H · Post by **Dave H** » Fri 23 Mar, 2007 12:02 pm

No you are not talking rhubarb.John Ronald Reuel Tolkien was a reader in English at Leeds University from 1920-23 (sort of an associate professor) and Professor of English language 1923-25.He was working on ideas which became 'The Hobbit' (pub 1937)and later the 'Lord of the Rings' trilogy at this time and had taken the jobs to support his family. Although most of the places, people and names are thought to have originated during his childhood in Sarehole in the West Midlands it is almost inevitable that his fertile writers mind took inspiration from his 5 or so years in this semi rural part of Leeds.Also during his time in Leeds in he collaborated with E. V. Gordon on the book 'Sir Gawain and the Green Knight'.

rikj · Post by **rikj** » Sat 24 Mar, 2007 11:02 pm

I believe Tolkien lived in West Park and it's thought that The Hollies may have provided some of the inspiration for Middle Earth, particularly Lothlorien. You can quite see why.Maybe he walked to the university along Woodhouse Ridge, then down the ginnels. At the moment I walk to work the other way, up the Otl;ey Road, then up the ginnels. Which is a bit of a nightmare as it against the flow of several thousand students coming into town!

munki · Post by **munki** » Thu 25 Feb, 2010 11:49 am

Apparently he lived on 'St Mark's Terrace' before he moved up to West Park, although I can't actually find St Mark's Terrace on googlemap. Maybe it was demolished to make way for St Mark's Flats?Does anyone know where Tolkien's office at the University was? It's amazing that there are no blue plaques to celebrate the fact that he was there... even though he didn't start the Lord of the Rings or The Hobbit until he had left Leeds. He started writing the stories which make up The Book of Lost Tales & The Silmarillion in 1917... so Middle Earth would have been on his mind in the years he was in Leeds.

Post by **chameleon** » Thu 25 Feb, 2010 12:16 pm

munki wrote: Apparently he lived on 'St Mark's Terrace' before he moved up to West Park, although I can't actually find St Mark's Terrace on googlemap. Maybe it was demolished to make way for St Mark's Flats?Does anyone know where Tolkien's office at the University was? It's amazing that there are no blue plaques to celebrate the fact that he was there... even though he didn't start the Lord of the Rings or The Hobbit until he had left Leeds. He started writing the stories which make up The Book of Lost Tales & The Silmarillion in 1917... so Middle Earth would have been on his mind in the years he was in Leeds. St Mark's Terrace was here Munki 1908

munki · Post by **munki** » Fri 26 Feb, 2010 9:40 am

Ah, ok. Thank you! So, he lived on campus on a street which has gone to make way for what is now the Faculty of Engineering. I wonder if that was where the School of Anglo-Saxon Literature (or whatever it was called) was? I think at the time that he taught there it was in a school which was separate from the School of English. Anyone know anything about this? The University of Leeds website has shockingly little information about his involvement with the place!