And now for some good new!
The Welsh town of Crickhowell has won the Christie’s auction for a 1966 letter in which J.R.R. Tolkien confirmed the town inspired “Crickhollow” in The Lord of the Rings. The winning bid was £15,000, reaching £19,800 with buyer’s premium, well above the pre-sale estimate of £5,000 to £7,000. A community fundraiser organized by local resident Frank Ady made the purchase possible.
The letter was written in 1966 to a Jenny Hall of Headington. In it, Tolkien wrote: “I have been in most parts of Wales, but the place names I used are made up from English models or borrowed from books, though Crickhollow was actually meant to resemble Crickhowell.” We covered the letter’s discovery when it first came to auction. The plan is to put it on permanent display in Crickhowell.
Crickhollow is the isolated house in Buckland where Frodo pretends to be moving as cover for his real departure from the Shire. Fatty Bolger stays behind to keep up appearances while Frodo, Sam, Merry, and Pippin head into the Old Forest. The Nazgul come for the house in the night, and Fatty barely escapes.
The name Crickhollow has long carried Celtic overtones, and this letter makes the geography explicit. Sugar Loaf mountain near Bwlch has been proposed as the inspiration for Erebor, and Bwlch itself has been linked to Bucklebury. The Llangynidr Bridge is a strong candidate for the Brandywine Bridge. Tolkien stayed near Talybont-on-Usk in the 1940s while writing much of The Lord of the Rings. The Brecon Beacons were the landscape he had in front of him while shaping the Shire and Buckland.
