THE SHIRE - THE HOBBITON PROJECT

© www.lotrscenerybuilder.org 2011




Hobbiton no. 36 at the close of the First Age: Bar-en-Aglareb…

Over Hill and Under Hill

"We ain't seen nothing yet."
That’s what we wrote at the end of 2010 when we celebrated the Glorious Past of the LOTR-Hobbiton set at Matamata. This remark was mainly based upon a photograph of a brand new smial, which had sneaked its way into our sepia-coloured 1999 Hobbiton Collection. At first we weren’t sure at all about its genuineness: with its weathered timber framing, it’s partly plastered brickwork and its lovely purple and white flowered front garden it looked far too real for a polystyrene fake façade. This was more like a picturesque dwelling in a forgotten corner of the Cotswolds. As it turned out, it was a pleasant shot of Hobbiton no. 3, freshly delivered… and taken more than a decade after the destruction of the set!

As more and more photographs of Hobbiton 2.0 popped up at Google Pictures in December 2010 it dawned on us that the hobbit village at Matamata was being rebuild – and already nearing its completion; while we had been gaping for weeks at an empty satellite image of the Hinuera area to reconstruct the Elder Days, the set builders of Three-Foot-Seven had restored Bilbo’s home town in its former glory… and much more than that!

The 1999 Hobbiton had been a real village; not just the usual ‘Main Street with Two Side Alleys’ which you come across in many movies, but a complete settlement with its own quarters and road system (it wasn’t Gandalf’s fault that such a mess was made of his entry at the Long-expected Party!). Sadly we didn’t get to see more than a few glimpses of it: the ‘Sweeping-Hobbits’ hole, the Proudfoot hole, Bagshot Row… Most of the thirty-seven smials that were built at the Alexander Farm didn’t make it to the screen. Only now, with the original holes back in place and another five or six added to the set, the creativity and scale of the 1999 Hobbiton village becomes truly visible. As for the hobbit holes, there are no doubles; every one has its own characteristics. Subtle details make them stand out from each other, with none of them offering a boring sight: all are utterly charming. But most shocking about this new Hobbiton village is: it was all there twelve years ago without most of the world having the faintest notion about it!

But that's going to change.

To illustrate the beauty that goes hidden behind the Hobbiton Map we’ve made a couple of hobbit holes – and we’re planning to build a few more (if not all of them!). To put them on the map - and to create some sort of order into our future activities - we have divided the village into eight separate quarters; you might recognize their names as they were taken from places elsewhere in the Shire. For the same reason we have added to our miniatures the numbered signs that were in place at the site during the construction stage. For us these numbers are indissolubly linked with the (NZ) Hobbiton Myth. Judging from some of the earliest sketches of Alan Lee they were already in use in 1999; now, they have actually become an ID tag for every individual hole.

By pointing to the numbered holes you can make your own virtual tour of the Hobbiton site: thumbnails of the corresponding smials will pop up as you move from hole to hole. Already, the Hobbit-Trailer, Peter Jackson’s Production Videos and the AICN Set Reports have revealed to us some of the most beautiful nooks of this little Shire village; once completed, this map might help you to locate all of them.

By the time 'The Hobbit' hits the screen in December 2012 we expect to know Bilbo's hobbitation inside out. So, no foolin' around this time when Gandalf's cart rides again, thank you…

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