Farmer Giles Of

In search of The Shire The Lost Heart of the Little Kingdom Alex Lewis oncerning Farmer Giles of William Morris (later Lord Nuffield) First published in ‘Leaves from the Ham1, Tolkien’s biographer and his production-line car manu Humphrey Carpenter stated tree, JR R Tolkien’s Shorter facture brought British-built cars C Fiction’ 1991, the Proceedings of the that Tolkien wrote it some time dur within the reach of millions. The ing the 1930s in part to amuse his 4th Tolkien Society Workshop, Cowley works in Eastern Oxford children but chiefly to please him Beverley 1989. were established in 1910 but it was self.2 The Little Kingdom is A Peter Roe booklet. well after 1918 that car production Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire. really expanded. In 1919 Morris Worminghall (meaning 'dragon- level, Farmer Giles of Ham could Motors employed only two hundred hall') is a place a few miles East of easily be seen as an allegory of workers. By 1924, this figure had Oxford. Early in 1938 he read a Tolkien's switch from academicism risen to 5,500. With the incorpora revised version at Worcester to creativity.5 Shippey points out tion of the Pressed Steel car-body College and It went down well, but that the allegory of the short tale Is making factory in Cowley, and Carpenter states that by 1945 very precise, with the Parson being Osberton Radiators in the North of Tolkien could not write the sequel perhaps the idealised philologist, Oxford, in 1926, 6,500 people since Oxfordshire had changed so the blade Tailbiter and the rope worked for the Oxford motor car much. which the Farmer used standing for industry. It is estimated that by the It Is perhaps strange for those philological science, Giles the cre Second World War thirty per cent of not acquainted with the area con ative instinct, the dragon represent the population of Oxford worked for cerned to think that as early as ing the ancient world of Northern the motor industry, and Morris had 1945 Tolkien bemoaned the passing imagination, and the king standing built his millionth car.6 This man of the Oxfordshire and Midlands for literary criticism that takes no power was satisfied by Immigrant countryside, and that he might have account of historical language labour drawn to the city by the given this as his main reason for not study. Shippey reveals to us that prospect of work In this ever- writing anything more concerning Tolkien illustrated with Farmer Giles expanding industry. The rise of the the Little Kingdom that contained of Ham that 'Thame' should be motor industry continued right up to Farmer Giles of Ham 3: The heart 'Tame', 'for Thame with an "h" is a the 1960s and brought with it its has gone out of the Little Kingdom, folly without warrant'; this was a lin own by-product, the proliferation of and the woods and plains are aero guist's dig at the Irrational spellings large fast road networks at the dromes and bomb-practice targets.1 within the English language. expense of the English countryside. A casual reader might think such a One can discover by examining Tolkien would say late in his life conclusion reactionary. Tolkien had several sources how life in when he saw a new road being built: a great love for all things natural, Oxfordshire changed drastically 'There goes the last of England's and trees In particular4, but I shall from the 1910s when Tolkien first arable!'7 He was for instance con show that his concerns for the envi came to Oxford and grew to love cerned by plans in the mid-1950s to ronment were well-founded even as Oxfordshire and its countryside, to build a relief road across early as 1945. Taken today, his fears the 1940s and 1950s and indeed Christchurch Meadows, a local gov for it verge on the prophetic. beyond that time to when it fell from ernment scheme that thankfully One is always confronted when his esteem. never went beyond the planning reading Tolkien's so-called minor This paper examines the popula stage.8 So great was the public out works with this innate passion for tion growth, the increase in the cry at the time that a plan was seri the English Midlands countryside, a Oxford city housing stock, the ously considered to build a two- passion that his detractors might changes in rural Oxfordshire due to mlle-long tunnel from The Plain run say has almost a hint of the ridicu the defence of the realm during ning under Christchurch Meadows lous about it. But that would be to World War Two, and the Increase in and emerging at the other side of look at the parody of the man, and road traffic. Oxford in order to relieve traffic with not the man himself and his sur First of all, the growth in popula minimal environmental Impact, roundings and scholarship. I say tion. Why should a sleepy University though this was eventually proven to 'so-called' minor works, for Shippey town grow at all? The answer is the be too expensive.9 has suggested that, on another rise in prominence of the motor car. Another road that Tolkien would Alex originally dedicated this paper to the memory of Mr Perey Broadiss, Great Clarendon Street, Oxford; 1906-1989, his 'Gaffer Gam gee'. 3 Mallorn XLI likely have been opposed to would Birmingham. From 1986 onwards, and a heart of its own. Yet this have been the Marston Ferry Link £133,000 per year was allocated to 'London effect' is only a more recent Road, completed in 1971, but dis the land acquisition budget for build phase of the capital's threat to the cussed for many years before ing new roads in Oxfordshire.12 How Oxfordshire countryside, and to the that.10 In the years that the Tolkien Tolkien would have hated the 'motor city of Oxford itself, which had family lived in Northmoor Road11 cars' progress' at the cost of yet begun in earnest during World War they often hired a punt for the sum more precious Midlands country Two with the evacuation of many mer and went up the Cherwell to side. Londoners to Oxford, which was a Water Eaton and Islip and pic Along with the rise of the 'safe city’, in order to escape the nicked, or to Wood Eaton looking for motor car, one might well add the Blitz. Only one enemy aircraft ever butterflies, or took drives to spread of the London commuter belt flew over Oxford, and' that was late Worminghall, Brill, Charlton-on- beyond the Berkshire town of in the war to photograph the Cowley Otmoor or West into Berkshire up Reading to engulf Oxford, as con works then used for aircraft White Horse Hill to see the ancient tributing to the loss of self and the repairs13. Thomas Sharp called it a long-barrow known as Wayland's fading of the uniqueness of Oxford whim of luck that Oxford was never Smithy. Looking to the present day as a university city. Oxford was for bombed, unlike its close neighbour he was correct to fear the incursion tunate and yet unfortunate to be Coventry and the city of Exeter to of the road system on the country only fifty-five miles from central the south-west. It was this funda side. For instance, Phase 2 of the London. Commuters first began to mental change in the population of M40 motorway that first linked use the rail system to travel from the city of Oxford which brought Oxford and London in the 1970s Oxford to London via Reading in about a loss of Oxfordshire charac was a reality by 1990, and it cuts numbers during the 1950s and the ter in its people; a dilution, if you right across Otmoor and the areas two-and-a-half-hour journey by car like, of the Midlander, supplanted by of natural beauty that lie there from Oxford to London was cut to a the Cockney refugee and also the (including Worminghall, Brill, mere one-hour drive by the building labourers who came to look for work Charlton-on-Otmoor, Islip and Water of the M40 motorway in 1969-1972, from the poorer regions of the coun Eaton) to bring more volumes of completing the 'suburbanisation' of try. The Sam Gamgees of traffic faster to Banbury and a city that once possessed a being Oxfordshire were becoming a rarity. Population in ,000's Figure 1. Population of Oxfordshire (as defined 1.4.74) plotted against time. 4 Lost Heart of the Little Kingdom This as much as anything would hood, and found that it had changed there were listed 50,638 as have reinforced the strangeness of almost beyond his recognition: 'How opposed to 44,527 in 1921. the city Tolkien once came to love I envy those whose precious early Examining the statistics of housing as an undergraduate, when he scenery has not been exposed to stock, there was a lower proportion looked at It during the late 1930s such violent and particularly of the larger houses (9 rooms and and early 1940s, and it is little won hideous change.' This was a griev more) and of the very small houses der that he was disheartened. In ous loss for him of childhood mem (4 rooms and less) built in this peri that light the threat of Southern ories, and in Oxford too the changes od, and most houses built were of 5- refugees moving into Bree in The were coming fast and furious.

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