Pleasingly, The Rings of Power productively blends these together. With 23 main characters and eight world regions – that’s discounting a ninth realm in Númenor, which doesn’t appear until episode 3 – Amazon’s Lord of the Rings has plenty of moving parts to establish. (Image credit: Ben Rothstein/Prime Video)įrom there, the show takes viewers on a whistle-stop tour of its multiple races, core cast, and key locations. Experts agree that this was Dent’s Garth, a wood near the village, which still has a glorious understorey of frothy cow parsley.Amazon's Lord of the Rings marks the live-action debut of Númenor and its long-living human population. The newly pregnant Edith danced for her husband in what he called in later writings “a hemlock glade”. The pretty, sleepy village is little more than a mile from Thirtle Bridge, perfect for a bit of R&R for JRR and his wife. The most poignant site is Roos, where, says Mathison, “Tolkien reality merges with myth”. (Though I can’t imagine what he would have made of watching them from a hot tub.) I even spotted Venus – AKA Eärendil, the elves’ most beloved star – towards the sea one early morning. As in 1917, there is no light pollution here: gazing up at the clear, spangled sky, I could see why Tolkien gave such importance to stars and starlit nights.
Reached along undulating, tree-lined lanes, they’re in a gloriously peaceful spot that comes into its own after dark. We stayed a few miles away at North Star Sanctum, a development of one-and two-bedroom lodges opened in 2019. It still stands today, peering towards the sea from a field north of the village. Photograph: AlamyĪs a signals officer, Tolkien would have had duties at Kilnsea’s precursor to radar, the concrete sound mirror, which focused the sound of aircraft engines on to a microphone. This and tales the author must have heard of Yorkshire’s “Lost Atlantis”, Ravenser, a large port in the Humber destroyed by storm and flood in the mid-1300s, probably inspired his lost realm of Númenor, sunk by a great wave in the second age. The fact that this is northern Europe’s fastest-eroding coastline (up to four metres a year) is obvious here: the edge of the land is raw and ravaged, and stretches of footpath regularly topple down the low cliffs. Tolkien spent most of his time down the coast at Thirtle Bridge Camp, near Tunstall, training to be a signals officer: battalion HQ is now Sand Le Mere holiday park. Tolkien had married shortly before embarking for France, and when he was posted initially to Hornsea musketry camp early in 1917, his wife, Edith, took the opportunity to be near him, staying in a modest house (with blue plaque) near the Mere on Bank Terrace. The prettiest resort is Hornsea, with a sand-and-shingle beach and cute Victorian streets between the wide, lawned prom and Hornsea Mere, the largest lake in all four Yorkshires. Hornsea Mere, the largest lake in all four Yorkshires – Tolkien was posted to a training camp nearby. But after the mud and horror of the front, this quiet agricultural land rising gently to the coast must have seemed paradisiacal, especially as spring and summer 1917 were “brilliantly fine and warm”, according to military reports. Hull is said to be at the end of a 50-mile cul-de-sac, which makes the Holderness plain to its east a hinterland beyond a road to nowhere. Tolkien’s Shire is based on rural Worcestershire – and the Misty Mountains on the Swiss Alps – but the author’s time in this remote coastal area inspired chief elements in his tales, including Middle-earth’s greatest love story. He spent the rest of the war on light duties in East Yorkshire – the former officers’ hospital in Hull where he was treated is up for sale – while comrades at the front died in such numbers that by 1918 his battalion, the 11th Lancashire Fusiliers, numbered just 14 men and was disbanded. Second lieutenant JRR Tolkien was shipped home sick in November 1916 and was never “fighting fit” again.
After the mud and horror of the front, this quiet land rising gently to the coast must have seemed paradisiacal
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