A recent trip to the English Cotswolds provided the chance for me to see The Bell Inn, best known as the apparent inspiration for JRR Tolkien’s pub, The Prancing Pony from The Lord of the Rings.

Situated on the main through road in Moreton-in-Marsh, it’s an unremarkable building from the outside, struggling to compete with some of the picture postcard pubs scattered throughout the Cotswolds. Inside, however, it has a ‘Tolkien Corner’ dedicated to the great man with a large map of Middle Earth on the wall.

This was the corner said to have played host to Tolkien and his brother, Hillary on many occasions and it’s easy to imagine them in there. That Tolkien could have taken inspiration from the old pub and given it such prominence in his epic story says much for the power of a pint in the nook of an old English pub.

Tolkien took the pub and location and it became The Prancing Pony’ in Bree, a place given its own chapter in the great trilogy and the meeting point for Gandalf and Thorin Oakenshield, and for Aragorn (Strider) to meet the Hobbits where he agrees to help them on their journey.

Any inn recommended by Tom Bombadil couldn’t be ignored: ‘Even from the outside the inn looked a pleasant house to familiar eyes. It had a front on the road and two wings running back on land partly cutout of the lower slopes of the hill, so that at the rear the second floor windows were level with the ground. …a fat white pony reared up on its hind legs. Over the door was painted in white letters: The Prancing Pony by Barliman Butterbur’

This wasn’t the only Tolkien and Cotswolds connection I managed to find but more of that later. That whole area with the unmistakable Cotswolds stone exudes Tolkien charm and a reminder of our past. How wonderful to see the inspiration for a piece of one of the great novels of our time.

Further reading

The Hobbit 50th Anniversary Edition

Pauline Baynes Artwork for Tom Bombadil