One ring to rule them all
One ring to find them
One ring to bring them all
And in the darkness….bind them
Stepping into the world of a movie isn’t really a thing that most people get to experience (Universal Studios doesn’t count), unless of course you’re in the film industry. But – as most of you have long since figured out – my rather unique line of work presents me with some rather excellent opportunities in some equally excellent locales.
The flyer for the crew tour to ‘Hobbiton’ came out weeks ago, and I was – needless to say – one of the first to sign up. I mean really, how could I resist? That said, I don’t think any of us really knew precisely what to expect. We were all joking about how we were going to spend the day at the Shire, but what we didn’t realize was that this really was the Shire!
It’s common knowledge that the Lord of the Rings was filmed in New Zealand. I can’t think of anywhere else on earth where it could have been filmed. If there is anywhere in the real world that could be Middle Earth, it’s New Zealand. As the rattletrap bus we were riding zoomed around corners and down hills (it was like riding a roller coaster! Weeee! Man that driver went fast) we zipped by miles of picturesque countryside dotted with cows and sheep, not a person to be seen. The farms here are massive so while there are doubtlessly farmhouses on them somewhere, they’re a long long long way from the road.
When we arrived at the location, you could tell that it had once been a movie set. It had that feel to it at the outer perimeters. Our driver stopped to pick up ‘Horndog Harry’ (his name for himself not ours!) who was to be our most excellent guide for the duration of the tour, and we continued on in our rattletrap bus along the sloping roads of the farm where once hundreds of extras and actors and directors had been busy filming one of the greatest fantasy epics of our time. This is the biggest movie set in the world, and it is only a very small part of this massive farm. I mean, the farm is big enough that it can have the biggest movie set in the world tucked into one corner of it and still be a fully operating farm. HUGE place. The trailers and such are all long gone now of course, but the guide still pointed out where they once were, including where the ‘Animal Kingdom’ had been: a vast sprawling field to the left of the road. As our guide pointed out laughingly, the animals were cast just the same way as the people were:
The animals of course included horses, pigs, chickens, dogs you name it they had it. Ironically they even brought in their own sheep. This farm has thousands of sheep, but they brought in their own sheep. Special breed that has four black feet and a black face. Our sheep are just plain ol’ white sheep …didn’t have the right look, that’s show business for ya.
He went on to say that originally the entire set had been destined for demolition. That’s usually the deal with movies that film on location, they come in, they do their filming, they tear everything down and leave it as they found it. But as fate would have it there was a massive rainstorm right when they were supposed to be doing the demo, which made the ground way too unsafe for the machinery, so the demolition was delayed for six months. In that six months, word spread that there were still fragments of the Shire on the farm and, as you can imagine, people came from all over. Eventually the family that owns the land was able to renegotiate their contract with Hollywood and the set was able to say, and was actually rebuilt to be completely permanent for the latest Hobbit movies, so it’s there to stay now. Thanks to a freak rainstorm.
Eventually the bus dropped us off at the entrance to the actual ‘village’. The first thing that struck you was the smell, it was so beautiful. Completely fresh air, it smelt…like home. Anyway, we all went crunching up the gravel roads, and suddenly, right there in front of you, is the Party Tree.
I know there are some of my readers who have never read, nor watched, nor listened to, Lord of the Rings, so this big of an explanatory paragraph is for you. The rest of you of course, can skip this, as you will have 
had an instant visual of fireworks, ale, tobacco and hanging lanterns the second I said ‘The Party Tree. At the beginning of the story Bilbo Baggins is celebrating his 111th birthday, he does this by throwing an immense party to which pretty much all of the Shire is invited, the party takes place under the spreading boughs of a massive tree in the middle of a field. This is that tree.
Apparently when they were doing fly-overs of the area looking for locations it was this particular tree that caught their interest. They were, in fact, only going to film the Party scene here, but when they landed they looked around and realized that they could not see a single man-made structure for miles. It was then that they knew they’d found their Shire.
If it weren’t for that tree, they wouldn’t have stopped the plane. It was because of that tree ladies and gents, that they found this farm.
Today, Hobbiton is a permanent movie set, it’s fully maintained with real vegetable gardens, full props and everything. Every six weeks experts fly out from the states to check that all the details are still right. What I found fun were the fruit trees, now they are actual proper fruit bearing trees, but when the movie was first filmed, they brought in apple trees (because the only thing that would work for the size scale-wise were a specific kind of apple tree), and then promptly took all the apples off them and replaced them with plums. Why? Because there’s a passage in the book that refers to young hobbits sitting under the plum trees making pyramids with the plum pits….so plums it had to be.
Talk about detail.
The Door to Bag End
We wound our way through the various trails and past all the totally unique hobbit holes (not one of which is the same, and only two of which are built to 100% scale), listening to the guide talk about where specifically Gandalf had let the fireworks off for the children etc etc. It’s a neat kind of thrill to realize you are walking along the same trails that Ian Mckellan once did.
Eventually we ambled up to Bag End itself (again, for the non-LOTR’s Bag End is Bilbo Baggin’s house) One of those two hobbit holes that was built to scale. It’s only the exterior of course, although there is a few feet of hallway visible through the door so that when Bilbo opened it to greet Gandalf the scene would pass seamlessly into the studio set in Wellington. But it’s still impressive. The oak tree atop it caused them no end of problems apparently. Originally they had thought of taking what would become the party tree and turning into an oak tree (yup, they can do that!), and build Bag End under it, but instead they moved where they were going to build Bag End, but were then faced with the problem of no longer having a tree above it like they were supposed to. So they bought a tree, cut it down, cut it apart, and put it back together on set, right down to attaching individual leaves.
All for a tree that features in the movie for….about twenty seconds.
The oak tree that stands above Bag End today is a reconstruction…. 
The last Hobbit house we saw is the one that has always stuck with me from the movies too, in fact, probably it’s one of the many scenes that touches everyone somehow. At the end of the film – just like in the end of the book – Frodo leaves Middle Earth (“We set out to save the Shire, Sam, and we did save it, but not for me”) and his best friend Sam returns home to his family, scoops up his daughter in his arms and looks at his wife Rosy, and utters just a few words:
Well…I’m back
And together they go into the house and close the door behind them. And that’s the end of the whole story.
Sam Gangee’s Front Door
When they built the hobbit house with the yellow door, the builders had no idea of the significance of that particular piece of the set. The scenes weren’t filmed in order, and usually the people constructing the sets had no idea what was being filmed where anyhow. It wasn’t until they saw the movie that they realized that the reason that that particular hobbit hole was the only other one built to 100% scale was because it was Sam Gangee’s house and therefore was the house featured in the very last scene of the very last film.
It’s right here, that Sam Gangee comes home, one young child runs towards him and he picks her up, and his wife Rosy comes out of that yellow door with their other daughter in her arms and he tells her he’s come back, and they go into that house and pull that yellow door shut behind them and that is the end of the Lord of the Rings…
Very cool.
It was only a few minutes’ walk through some lovely woodland before we came to the mill and the big stone bridge. Once plywood and Styrofoam they are now full and properly constructed and apparently the bridge could take the weight of a large truck if one were found that was narrow enough to cross it! And across the bridge was the Green Dragon Inn. Although originally the pub was an exterior set just like everything else, the site only recently got permission to construct it as an actual pub, an exact duplicate (though granted human size, not hobbit size!) of the original description, with its own brands of ale and cider.
So I can now say that I’ve had a cider in the Green Dragon Inn…again, not something I ever really thought I’d say.
The cider was good, but I think the sunshine, and the lazy banter that always happens on crew tours, and the deliciously fresh air was considerably better.