Tolkien's inspiration

I read JRR Tolkien's 'Lord of the Rings' and 'The Hobbit' when I was 16. I was quite taken by it all, but then I was only 16. Since then lots of others, often far older people, fell in love with him. They read the books, they watched the movies, and a lot of them went to New Zealand to visit Middle Earth.

Or at least, they went to visit the fabulous wild countryside on New Zealand's South Island, where the movies were shot.

They've got it all wrong however. Tolkien grew up in Birmingham, in what is now the suburb of Moseley. The bits of countryside that inspired him are the Moseley Bog, and the Lickey Hills, a few kilometres to the west.

And then there's the old mill, Sarehole Mill, which was supposedly the inspiration for the mill in Hobbiton.

I went for a little exploration of the Moseley Bog, and witnessed a rather Lord of the Rings-ish episode. There was suddenly a near fight to the death between a big fluffy dog and a monster Staffordshire Terrier killing machine. The young Hobbits supposedly controlling them screamed and kicked them helplessly. It lasted several minutes. The ents looked on silently.

Baron Austin of Longbridge (& Melbourne!)

I've learnt a little about Sir Herbert Austin recently. Later Baron Austin of Longbridge, he was the man who more than anyone else shaped the landscape of the part of Birmingham where I grew up.

During my youth the car manufacturing plant he founded employed about 25,000 people and covered several square kilometres. Gee, were we proud of it.

All good things come to an end though, and mediocre things too. The cars it produced became more and more mediocre, and the once mighty company shrank, merged, changed its name of few times, got taken over by others from around the world, and eventually gave up the ghost entirely.

Out of the ashes though......  what a business opportunity. What a huge expanse of real estate. Above is a plan of the redevelopment currently underway, stolen from the website www.newsteelconstruction.com   There's going to be housing, shops, parks, commercial and industrial areas galore.  There's already a fair few things there, like the shiny new technical college (whose roof partly blew off while I was there!), and the comfortable and spacious Sainsburys supermarket (whose coffee shop provided a welcome respite from the cold, wet weather outside). There's even an Austin Park, with memorial to the good Lord, and a blow by blow account of the rise and fall of his company. 

One unexpected finding during my extensive research this evening (ie. I read the Wikipedia entry): He spent several formative years in Australia! Between 1884 and 1893 he was here, based in Melbourne, and later Sydney. He married a Melbourne girl, and he was involved in designing and building printing equipment, gas engines, locomotive boilers, gold mining equipment, and eventually a sheep shearing machine! The latter enterprise was with one Frederick Wolseley, who was also later to give his name to a car brand. It was only after his return to England that Austin became interested in motor cars.

He was born in south east England, but buried in a church cemetery in the Lickey Hills.

Picture of the 5,000,000th Mini stolen from www.libraryofmotoring.info