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In Carpenter's biography of houses that are only distinguished Tolkien, there are two whole one from the other by their chapters devoted to trying to numbers, built for the workers in reconcile the ordinariness of the their tens of thousands who come man with the great works he from all over the Kingdom and produced. In chapters 1 and 2 of beyond to work in the car factories Part 4, Carpenter described the to the east in Cowley. I could take places and dwellings that Tolkien a hypothetical visitor on a ’tour’ of lived in as unremarkable and middle such areas and expose the ugly class English. They w ere a ’man- underbelly of Oxford: Cowley, ports made suburbia" that seemed to clash of the Abingdon Road, Jericho and with Tolkien's own deeply held what used to be the slums around sensibilities and love for unspoilt Paradise Street (now long since countryside. Carpenter rightly asks demolished to make way for hideous the question why, and then goes on concrete shopping preoincts, car to suggest that it was mainly that parks and magistrates' buildingsl - the inner man who was at work on do things never improve?) and the the mythopoeic writings was ’new slums', such as parts of essentially unaffected by his Kidlington and Blackbird Leys which surroundings and also his own were mostly developed / degraded financial circumstances. in Tolkien's last years and after his death. I am somewhat at odds with the emphasis in this approach, But there are also parts of especially being from Oxford myself. the city which are far from sordid. I have lived for my formative And there is the passage of time teenage years (during which I that Carpenters thesis does not discovered Tolkien) within a mile of allow for; if one was to tour the where Tolkien spent a good part of parts of Oxford he described now , his adult life and where he wrote one would probably oome to the The H o b b it, much of The Siimariiiion, same conclusion as he did, but the and most of The Lord oT the Rings - Oxford I am speaking of is one that 22 years, from 1925 to 1947 - and existed up until the last years of the descriptions furnished by the 1960s. Up until those times, and Carpenter of the district made me most definitely in the times when wonder if he was seeing the same Tolkien lived there, it was far from places as I had lived in and the ’sordid suburbia’ that Carpenter experienced. visualises for us.
There ore some truly sordid I hold that the North of parts of Oxford; the "sordid Oxford, with Northmoor Road and suburbia’ of faceless, nameless little the 'city end’ of the Banbury and /6
Woodstock Roads, before South however have lived in suitably large Parade, reaching in to North Parade accommodation south of the city, and then to St. Giles, was a place and in a much less stimulating where one's imagination could fly environment for far less cost, but unfettered, and from where it was he chose not to. the matter of a very short journey 4) His means; the wages o f a to arrive in the midst of unspoilt Professor were hardly substantial, countryside. It is of course not the and certainly not such that he might same today, sadly. have considered going to the new upper class areas such as Boar s Hill My own b elief is that and Shotover Hill, or some o f the circumstance alone dictated Tolkien's outlying villages. He had to take in choices, but that within the examination papers to mark in the restriction of his earnings and summer to earn himself more money circumstances he chose as mentally in addition to his salary, so that stimulating and spiritually acceptable indicates the circumstances he was a place to live as he could find and in. Furthermore any o f these that during the years he wrote his alternative locations would have most important fictional works, his necessitated a car, which would surroundings cannot be described as have been an extra expense. In being entirely at odds with his inner actual fact. North Oxford was the spiritual yearnings. only logical choice, given his circumstances and his aversion to If one examines his driving, if he wished live somewhere circumstances at that time, they can that combined the human needs of a be put into four categories: in no family with as stimulating an order of importance, we have: environment as was possible within 1) Work: he was an Oxford a city. Professor. He had to live within striking distance of his workplace, If l may divert for a moment, or the city centre. He detested I shall examine where Tolkien chose driving, and so that meant being to live - when he began to have within cycling range of the colleges. any choice in the matter, Up until This alone would have limited Tolkien his marriage and then until the end to within the city boundaries. o f the First World War, he had no 2) The children’s schooling: here, such choice. After that time, he there was the excellent preparatory and Edith lived at 1 A lfred Street, school known (fortuitously) as the Oxford, in rented rooms with their Dragon School a short walking child, while he worked at the distance from where he lived and Oxford English Dictionary. From down safe back streets so that the 1921 to 1925 he lived in Leeds, in young children did not have to housing that was as reasonable as brave main road traffic. Of other he might obtain in that city at that preparatory schools in Oxford city, time. Indeed he changed house as none would have given the degree soon as he was able to get out of a of preparation - especially in Latin smoky industrial area into something and French - that the Dragon School a little more tolerable. By the time gave to Its pupils. This was what it he returned to Oxford in 1925, he was rightly respected for. already had three children, aged 8, 3) A large family: with four children, 5 and 1. He lived in Northmoor himself and his w ife, he needed a Road, and only moved once, when house with enough space for them the next door house, No. 20, became all, plus a study he could work in available as Basil Blackwell was with the undergraduates that he had moving out. He lived in Northmoor to instruct. This limited the choice Road from 1925 to 1947, and it was of area for housing still further, there that his creativity reached its since much o f the housing to the peak. By this time, after the end of east of the city, which was cheaper the Second World War, his children to buy and pay services for, would w ere 30, 27, 23 and 18 years o f age. have been the standard three bedroom variety and not large The Victorian houses of enough for his purposes. He might North Oxford right up to 17
South Parade (otherwise known as been 60 years old; these houses had Summertown) and even those in the character and age by the time he side streets, were far from 'sordid had oome to Northmoor Road. suburban dwellings*. There were the palatial and unique dwellings with Countryside was within a turrets and stained glass windows short cyole ride or walk from that Carpenter described them as Northmoor Road. The University being. In truth, a ll the houses in Parks were just down a red-brioked North Oxford had (and some still do) alleyway (if I add 'tree-shaded, at least a quarter of an acre of dark' that would perhaps indicate gardens and the majority of them the poetio effect the area had on were detached. Tolkien had a tennis me even in the 1960s and early court in the back of No. 20 which 1970s) from Northmoor Road and he and the children dug up to put in once there, it was but a walk to the more vegetables. How many people farmland on the other side of the have a tennis court in their back Cherwell River that led to the gardens nowadays? It was no less a village of Old Marston. At Tolkien's rarity in his time. time, Old Marston was only a village with thatched cottages, an old 12th The streets were tranquil. I century church of St. Nicholas, a remember living on the main couple of pubs, and little else. Now Banbury Rood during the 1960s and of course it is a sprawling mass of cycling to school along that rood houses dating back about thirty from the age of 11 quite safely. I years, and hardly planned with any cycled to South Parks Road and cut thought to the preservation of the down Holywell (where traffic would countryside. But apart from the pick up) and then down Longwall University Parks, there was the punt Street, onto the High and across station and Marston Ferry, from Magdalen Bridge to my school on where Tolkien and his family would The Plain, and my parents and 1 take punting trips up-stream to were not in the least concerned W ater Eaton and Islip villages and about it, summer or winter. It is no into butterfly-inhabited countryside exaggeration to say that even during quite unspoilt by development (as it the busiest times of the day traffic now sadly is). Then also, a cycle was by today's standards very light. ride up the Woodstock Road would bring one to Port Meadow and yet The streets were lined with more countryside. old tall trees: horse chestnuts and poplars and oaks and planes; they By my definition, Tolkien's were oddly meditative streets to surroundings were far less either cycle along or walk down. 'suburban’ than one is led to believe, Birds sang, squirrels could be seen and far more stimulating to the on the main road, crossing imagination too. unconcerned by what occasional traffio there was. The houses were His later move to Merton all well set back from the road, so Road was dictated by circumstance - that, walking along the pavement, a large house at Northmoor Road one did not see much except the old and children growing up and moving dark and well-worn red brick walls away. In 1950 he made the with great hedges and growths, large disastrous move to Holywell Street; trees and the tiled roofs and hydra one may forgive a mistake of this headed chimneys poking up beyond sort. I imagine that Tolkien was the boughs of the trees. In autumn, unprepared for the shock of what the leaves from the trees drifted Oxford traffic had become by then down the streets and piled up In the in that narrow little place. Much of gutters; they were a constant the city’s north-to-east traffio nuisance in the old iron pipework would be diverted along that narrow gutters of the houses - high up and stretoh of road and since all the easily blocked, and a long shaky houses were right on the pavement, climb up a ladder to remedy. Even there was no esoaping the traffio in Tolkien's time, a house like the noise and fumes. In the event, in one I lived in would have already 1953 he moved on to Sandfield Road, It
1965.
Circumstances dictated Tolkien's move to Lakeside Road, Bournemouth in 1968 - there were reasons of age and the health of his wife. Prices of houses were much higher in Bournemouth than in Oxford - still a city outside the preferred scope of most London commuters in 1968. Tolkien himself mentioned his astonishment at the prices of properties in Bournemouth in one o f his last letters. A fte r Edith's death, Merton o ffe red him a place to stay and be looked after, and once again circumstances of health and age dictated his acceptance of this accommodation.
So 1 shall conclude by Headlington. By this time Tolkien observing that the term 'suburban' was 61, and no doubt following the can encompass a wide range of raising of his family of four, there conditions, and if where Tolkien were not large sums of money left lived can be described as 'suburban', to choose any house he might wish then it was certainly not sordid by to. Furthermore, there was in the any definition, and was one o f the 1950s a chronic housing shortage, more pleasant examples of that especially in Oxford as more and term that one could wish for. It more people came to work for the was hardly an obstacle for letting ever-expanding car factories in the the imagination rise and go to far peak of the 'you-never-had-it-so- distant places, and certainly no good' era. My parents recalled the hindrance to Tolkien's creation of difficulty of finding a property in Middle-earth, as some might hold or Oxford itself, and being obliged to ponder over with perplexity. live in the nearby town of Didcot for a year until a house in Oxford finally became available within their price range to buy. It would seem to me that Tolkien was forced by !Akx Lewis circumstance once more to buy the Sandfield Road house. He could not have opted for a quiet village near Oxford because he could not drive, and taking country buses in and out of the city would have been very tiring for them both. At first Sandfield Road must have been a fairly quiet neighbourhood, for the football ground was not all that popular - crowds o f less than 4,000 were routine up until the early 1960s. The proliferation of traffic and use o f his road as an unofficial by-pass must have come about in his last years at Sandfield Road, and so also must the 'Beatle Croup' he amusingly described as practising in a house nearby, as the Beatles themselves were not climbing to the height o f their popularity until, say.