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Social Bookmarking
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Continued
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The Oratory
Mabel Tolkien's search for a church that she found sympathetic
led her to Cardinal Newman's community at The Oratory on the Hagley Road.
At the time of their arrival in 1902, the magnificent new church was still being
built. The friendship of the parish priest, Father Francis Xavier Morgan, was to
provide an important source of strength to the family for the trials that were
to follow.
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Oratory
of St Philip Neri at Birmingham
'Little Rome in Birmingham', the Oratory Church was
built between 1907-1910 in the Baroque style as a memorial to Cardinal
Newman, founder of the English Oratory.
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25 Stirling Road
It was whilst they were living in Oliver Road that Tolkien's mother was
diagnosed as diabetic, and in 1904, while convalescing at the Oratory retreat
near Rednal, she died. Ronald and Hilary were sent to stay with an aunt,
Beatrice Suffield, at 25 Stirling Road, off the Hagley Road, where they remained
for four years. The house is still there, though Tolkien's memories of it were
gloomy.
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The Two Towers
Just around the corner in Waterworks Road was a building that
must have left an impression on the young Tolkien, an extraordinary 96ft (29m)
tower known as Perrott's Folly. It was built in 1758 by John Perrott and is
Birmingham's oddest architectural feature. Near it stands a later Victorian
tower, part of the Edgbaston Waterworks, and the pair are said to have suggested
Minas Morgul and Minas Tirith, the Two Towers after which the second
volume of the Lord of the Rings is named.
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During his time in Birmingham many other ideas sank
into the mind of the future novelist, to surface many years later.
Tolkien probably came across the word Gamgee as the local name for
cotton wool: Gamgee tissue. The inventor was a Birmingham surgeon, Dr
Joseph Sampson Gamgee, who lived in the city until his death in 1880 at
his house in Broad Street. Locally he is famous as the founder of the
Hospital Saturday Fund. Tolkien used the name Sam Gamgee in Lord of
the Rings for Frodo's faithful companion and the last of the
ring-bearers.
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Highfield Road
Ronald Tolkien lodged for a while in Duchess Road
where he met and fell in love with Edith Bratt, who was later to become
his wife. But Tolkien was still only 16 at the time and his guardian
Father Morgan attempted to put an end to the relationship by finding the
two boys new lodgings at 4 Highfield Road, Edgbaston.
This was to be his last address in Birmingham for it
was here that Ronald heard that he had won an exhibition to Exeter
College, Oxford, to study classics.
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He went to Oxford University in 1911, and
with the exception of army service and a spell as lecturer at Leeds
University he was to spend the rest of his life in Oxford.
>Tolkien weekend 2005
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Birmingham
London
Manchester
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