Tolkien's Residence in Roos

"A Lonely House Near Roos"?

Why in 1966/7 did Mary Sellars (née Bramham), a Withernsea schoolteacher, give one of her pupils an assignment to write a mock news report on Tolkien’s time living in Roos, East Yorkshire?  Another scholar was given a similar task on another local author - the poet Andrew Marvell.  I’m asking the question because before the publication of Tolkien’s official biography by Humphrey Carpenter in 1977, who knew of Tolkien’s residence in Roos during the Great War?  Were any interviews with Tolkien which mentioned Roos published in his lifetime?  There was at least one, so is it a coincidence that this also appeared around the same time the homework was given out?  Wayne Hammond has kindly drawn my attention to Tolkien's connection with Roos appearing in The Diplomat magazine in 1966, but was this seen by a provincial schoolteacher in East Yorkshire?  [This paragraph was re-edited 21/8/2025, when it was revealed that the homework was given out as late as 1966/7 and not 1964/5, as previously communicated]. 

Why was there a vestigial memory of Tolkien living in Roos 50 years after the event, when in 1917 he was an apparently unremarkable officer?  Was it because he had such a distinctive name and that made a lasting impression on the tightly-knit village for only the few months he was there, but when everyone would know everyone else?  

Tolkien in Uniform

Less than 5 years after the armistice The Yorkshire Post stated: “as is to be expected by the author’s connections with the Oxford English Dictionary, Mr. J.R.R. Tolkien’s “Middle English Vocabulary” (Clarendon Press, 4s. 6d. net) is fully abreast with most recent developments in philology and lexicology, and seems eminently suitable for the purpose for which it was designed” (14 June 1922, p.4).  Within a year Tolkien had a poem published in The Microcosm a journal in aid of the Boy Scout Movement. In a review he was described rather inaccurately as one of the “North-country litterateurs” [sic] featured in the periodical”  [The Yorkshire Post, 14 March 1923, (p.4.)].  The following year Tolkien’s role was upgraded from a reader in English to a new professor in the recently established English Department at the University of Leeds.  This was reported in The Yorkshire Post on 31 July 1924. The publication of Tolkien and Gordon’s edition of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight was mentioned on 6 May 1925 (p.4).  Over the next 4 years Tolkien’s burgeoning academic career was referenced several times in this provincial newspaper.  The Yorkshire Post may have been taken by either the Reverend Milsom or the Roos schoolteacher G.W. Wilbraham, or even both.  Is this how the denizens of Roos kept abreast of the career of their erstwhile brief resident?  Tolkien’s name even appeared near the top of the front page of The Yorkshire Post on 28 January 1929 in a public notice for his forthcoming lecture in Leeds on “Celts and Teutons in Early Times”, in which he was described as Professor of Anglo-Saxon in the University of Oxford”.  So, if someone in Roos was following his career they would now be aware that he had progressed to Oxford.  

Over the next couple of decades Tolkien was referred to less frequently in The Yorkshire Post, but he was mentioned prominently, and his connection with both Leeds and Oxford universities were stressed, on the publication of The Hobbit (20 October 1937, p.6).  The Yorkshire Post also reminded its readers of Tolkien’s Leeds University connection when The Fellowship of the Ring was reviewed by Andrew Keir on 10 September 1954 (p.4).  

It would seem that Tolkien’s connection with Roos only appeared once in the public domain during his lifetime.  However, he mentioned it in private letters to his American publishers in 1955, to Christopher Bretherton in 1964, and finally, to his son Christopher in 1972.  These letters were not made public until they were published in book form in 1981.  He also emphasised the importance of Roos in his TV interview recorded in 1968, but this section was not broadcast, and the text was not published until Stuart Lee reconstructed the interview in print as late as 2018 (Tolkien Studies: Volume XV, Morganstown, West Virginia University Press, p.162).  Roos wasn’t even mentioned in Grotta’s unauthorised biography (1976), but neither was Tolkien’s 18-week hospitalisation explicitly assigned to Hull in that volume.  Humphrey Carpenter actually referred to Roos in his 1977 biography, but incorrectly dates the stay in Roos to after Edith gave birth to their eldest child, John, when all the evidence points to the Roos episode belonging to the period before John’s birth in November 1917 (John Garth, Tolkien and the Great War, pp.238-9.)

The reason Mary Sellars knew about Tolkien and Roos in 1966/7 must remain conjectural at this stage, but his career may have been followed by readers of The Yorkshire Post.  So, what did the schoolboy discover?  He interviewed residents of Roos, but of course half a century after Tolkien left it was descendants of people who may have met or knew of Tolkien that had stories to tell.  His best informant was Arthur Robinson, who directed his attention to Mr Cheeseman’s tenure at the Post Office.  Three different residences of where the Tolkien may have lived had left traces, which were still remembered in 1964.

Roos Post Office in its 1917 position

The three addresses are: A room above the Post Office at the time, the house next door to the Post Office, and the Old Rectory (also known as Roos Hall in 1917).  Phil Mathison considers most of the candidates for the sites of Tolkien's lodging houses, but his book does not mention Roos Hall and when he discusses the Rectory, it is the 1893 building which is considered (Phil Mathison, Tolkien in East Yorkshire, 2012).

The same building as it looked on 11 February 2020

In 2020 the Post Office is on the north-east edge of the village at 3-5 Main Road, but this was not the case during the First World War.  At that time the Post Office was on the corner of Main Road and Ellerby Lane (now Hodgson’s Lane), which places it more centrally within the village.  The Post Office was opposite to the Black Horse Public House, which would have appealed to the bibulous Tolkien.  In 1917 the Post Office was run by a Mr Cheeseman, and it was his son, Gordon who informed the Withernsea schoolboy that Tolkien had lodged there during the Great War.  Even if Tolkien did not lodge above the Post Office or in the adjacent building there is no doubt that Tolkien would have made use of one of the most important buildings in this small community.                                                           

The 1917 Post Office and the adjoining house (another candidate for Tolkien's lodgings) as they look today

Tolkien did not write in detail about the precise addresss of any property in Roos.  However, on the manuscript of "The Horns of Ulmo" he wrote that it was "rewritten in a lonely house near Roos" (Shaping of Middle-earth, p.215).  This wouldn't be an apt description for either, the rooms above the Post Office, or the building next door, but it would be more fitting for the Old rectory/Roos Hall, which was on the southern edge of the village not too far from the "hemlock glade" in Dents Garth.  

This picture may be found in the baptistry of Roos Church

The Old Rectory or Roos Hall burned down on 8 September 1937, when it was described as a 40-roomed mansion owned by the Dickinson family.  Some of its 18 bedrooms were let out in the 1930s to various people, and it is possible the same occurred during 1917 when the Tolkiens may have had lodgings there.  A press report at the time of the fire mentions the caretaker checking the  “unoccupied part of the hall”, and if the situation was similar in 1917 this would help explain why Tolkien described it as a “lonely house.”  This building was on the east side of Rectory Road - the same side as All Saints Church - and was very close to the northern limit of Dents Garth.  The remains of Roos Hall were demolished and another house constructed on the site.  As of 2025 the replacement building has also been demolished, and another building is nearing completion.  The site of Old Roos Hall/Old Rectory would have been almost opposite the entrance to Elm Tree Farm, which still exists.  [This paragraph was re-edited 30/8/2025 on new information being received on the position of Roos Hall].

 Roos Hall on Fire - Hull Daily Mail 9 September 1937

My Roos correspondent informs me that a path from the hall led directly to nearby Dents Garth where there was a school.  Also, there was a track across the paddock to the bridge over the beck and through the woodland to the gates into the churchyard which were not far from the vestry door under the ‘watchtower’. Of course in May and June 1917 when the Tolkiens are believed to have been residing in Roos, these paths would have been lined with the attractive and ethereal Cow Parsley.  Edith is believed to have danced and sang among the Cow Parsley  or “hemlocks”, as Tolkien referred to them, in the woodland of Dents Garth. 

"Hemlocks" in Roos Churchyard

The 1893 Rectory as of February 2020

In 1917 there was another Rectory in Roos.  In the late-Nineteenth-century Roos Hall or the Old Rectory with its 40 rooms, including 18 bedrooms was considered too grand to be a rectory, so a new one was built nearly a quarter of a mile to the north-west.  This "was built 1892-3 in a Queen Anne style to designs by Temple Moore" (Victoria County History).  In 1964 this was an old rectory, but was less than 2 decades old when Tolkien was in Roos, so would have appeared to be fairly new.  This is another possible candidate for Tolkien's "lonely house", as it is a detached property on the western edge of the village with bare fields for miles to the west, and no habitations immediately adjacent to it.

The 1893 Rectory and out buildings in February 2020

 Today this is known as the Old Rectory, as a new one replaced it in 1968

When Roos Hall was burning, care was taken that the fire didn’t spread to nearby All Saints’ Church.  At the time Tolkien was in the village the rector was the Reverend Edward Milsom, and he remained in that position until 1921.  Under Milsom’s stewardship Roos Church was considered as very “High”, and the Lady Chapel, which is still present would have appealed to someone of Tolkien’s catholic faith.  It is believed Tolkien would have been welcome as a Catholic in a high Anglican atmosphere.  Edith, as a rather reluctant convert to Catholicism may have found the high Church of England atmosphere more congenial, especially compared with the converted cinema used for Catholic worship in Withernsea, which she was to endure later when she lived for several weeks in the seaside town.

Snowdrops around Roos Church in 2020

Although we are no nearer knowing precisely where Tolkien resided in Roos, I trust that the original pictures of the Post Office in his time and of Roos Hall, a truly lonely house, help interested parties visualise the kind of places Tolkien would have seen and known.  The modern photos show Roos as it is today.  

Pictures of the interior of the church and the vegetation in Dents Garth may be viewed here

Tolkien’s Tinúviel: the Nightingale in Tolkien’s Writings

All Nightingale Photos (c) 2016 Michael Flowers

This one taken in Lincolnshire in 2009

In late April Nightingales are still returning to southern Britain, so this seems an appropriate time to recall Tolkien’s treatment of this exquisite songster.  Tolkien refers to nightingales (mainly in passing) in a surprisingly high number of his works, but I’m not going to refer to them all here.  Instead, I list all the titles of his books in which I’ve been able to locate an allusion to this species in the almost obligatory appendix. 

Nightingale (Luscinia megarhynchos) 16½ cm (6½ ins) 
Quenya: lómelindё (dusk-singer); Sindarin: tinúviel (daughter of twilight) 

The Natural History of the Nightingale 

As Tolkien never provides a physical description of nightingales and only once attempts anything more than a brief evocation of listening to the effects of its song, what follow is a brief summary of the bird and its repertoire.  A nightingale is a small brown songbird of the thrush family, or to be slightly more accurate, a chat, which is a particular sub-family of the thrushes.  It is roughly intermediate in size between a robin and a song thrush.  It is an unobtrusive bird and spends most of its time hidden in deep cover, which is why it has a large dark eye to enable it to locate its food of worms, beetles and other insects in semi-darkness.  It will often raise its rufous-coloured tail while it forages on the ground where it can resemble the outline of a very large Wren. 

Nightingale collecting insects for nestlings

A nightingale’s physical appearance is understandably much less renowned than its stunningly-complex and amazingly-loud song. Although nightingales sing in the daylight as much as at night, the song becomes much more obvious in the dark when most other birds, apart from the much less musical owls, have become silent.  It is believed that male nightingales arrive first and select some suitable habitat, and sing day and night to attract a migrating female out of the sky down to their territory.  Perhaps it is appropriate here to state that all singing nightingales are male birds, although many poets used to assume that they were female.  Scientists believe a male with a more complex song will attract a female more quickly, as his song is a way of illustrating that he is likely to be the most productive bird, and is therefore believed to be carrying the most successful genes to be passed on to the next generation.  It is very hard to do justice to the remarkable qualities of its song in words, but this is Richard Mabey’s attempt: 

“there is a flourish of piping notes to begin with, sometimes in triplets or short arpeggios, and
often with an urgent, whiplash quality; then a single note repeated as a rich, liquid
bubbling or chuckling or slow trill…the bird’s signature tune…is a sequence of long,
sighing, indrawn whistles, mounting in a crescendo on a single note until they fall,
dramatically to a deep rattle.” 

In addition to Mabey’s comments it is worth adding that the nightingale’s habit of giving a fairly lengthy pause between each ‘aria’ raises similarities between the bird and opera singers. 

The nightingale’s song is justifiably famous, but each year it is only heard for a relatively short period.  The first males start to arrive about mid-April and sing both night and day for hours at a time, but once a male has paired up he will sing for shorter periods, and by the end of May there will be relatively few nightingales singing, and by the beginning of July none at all.  You may hear a nightingale singing at the RSPB website here

Male nightingale at full throttle

The Poetic Heritage 

The nightingale’s song has been the subject of poetic English literature for well over one thousand, three hundred years.  One of the earliest surviving poems about the bird is an Old English riddle by William of Malmesbury believed to have been written around 650 AD.  Tolkien lectured on the early Middle English Poem The Owl and the Nightingale, and even worked on a translation of it, which he probably left unfinished.  In early literature the nightingale tended to be seen as “cheerful, engaging birds, the friends and confidants of lovers”, but the situation changed in Renaissance times when the bird became associated with more illicit “sexual frolicking”(Mabey p.12).  Other more recent noteworthy contributions to the literary tradition have been provided by John Keats, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Robert Louis Stevenson and John Clare.  Only the latter has ornithological as well as poetic value.  To generalise, the Romantic poets reclaimed the nightingale’s song as a thing of joy (Cocker, p.342).  In the twentieth century T.S. Eliot’s influential interpretation in The Waste Land of the bird was associated with the “fragmented, loveless character of modern sexual relations” (Cocker, Ibid.).  It is unsurprising that Tolkien’s use of the nightingale has more kinship with the early literature and the Romantic poets than with Eliot.  An excellent survey of the literature and folk-lore, and descriptions of personal encounters with the nightingale, may be found in Richard Mabey’s Whistling in the Dark (1993), and in The Barley-Bird: Notes on the Suffolk Nightingale (2010).  Mabey’s thoughts on the species are distilled in the entry for the bird in Mark Cocker’s Birds Britannica (2005).  This small, apparently insignificant bird, over the past millennia, has accreted a disproportionate amount of cultural baggage, but how has Tolkien engaged with the species? 

Possibly a female Nightingale collecting nesting material

Tolkien’s Inspiration 

Ever since the publication of Humphrey Carpenter’s biography in 1977 it has become well-known among Tolkien readers that Tolkien was inspired to write the tale of Beren and Lúthien after his wife danced and sang for him in a glade with ‘hemlocks’ (cow parsley) near Roos, East Yorkshire during World War One.  The importance of this event in Tolkien’s literary imagination cannot be over-estimated.  He continued to write variations of their encounter for many decades; as Dimitra Fimi has summarised it “was first written in 1917 and exists in at least another eight versions, the latest written in the 1950s” (p.2).  Of all the characters he invented, it is the names Lúthien and Beren which appear on his and his wife’s gravestone.  Unfortunately, it seems unlikely that Edith Tolkien’s dance was accompanied by nightingales in Roos.   There are no Nightingales in the Roos area now, nor have there been for many decades.  However, it is just possible they may have been present one hundred years ago, so this is an area that warrants more research.  Occasionally, a member of the warbler family, the blackcap, is called the northern nightingale, so it may have been this species which sang in Roos, or just as plausibly a song thrush or even a blackbird.  Perhaps the bird song was completely imaginary, as the most common sounds in Dents Garth on an early summer evening now are from the extremely noisy rookery.  The nightingale has not  bred above the Humber in large numbers in recent decades, but there are ancient reports of them breeding as far north as Boroughbridge. Although occasional individual males still overshoot their territories and are heard singing for a few hours or even days in Yorkshire, the bird is declining locally.  Even the apparently healthy 1990s colony of a dozen singing males on Thorne Moors near Doncaster became extinct within the last decade.  One of the factors is believed to be the burgeoning population of several species of deer, including some which have been introduced.  These deer are heavily grazing the thick undergrowth needed by the species.  The nightingale population in Arda is more secure, as the many wolves keep the numbers of deer in check! 

Nightingale - note white eye-ring surrounding large dark eye

The Nightingale in Tolkien’s Writings 

Many readers’ first encounter with the nickname Tinúviel probably occurs when Aragorn relates Beren and Lύthien’s basic story initially in a poem, followed by a prose explanation to the Hobbits shortly before the attack of the Nazgûl on Weathertop in The Lord of the Rings (1954-5). However, Tolkien had been utilizing the word Tinúviel for decades in his unpublished writings.

In Tolkien’s work the nightingale is most closely associated with Lύthien, the daughter of Melian, the Maia, and Thingol. In The Silmarillion when Beren first sees Lύthien he names her Tinúviel, which is nightingale in the language of the Grey-elves. Later, when Beren hears her singing it is described as keen and heart-piercing. “Heart-piercing” were the same words used by the romantic poet and actress Mary Robinson (c.1757-1800) in her ode to the bird, but they are not specific enough to suggest Tolkien may have read and remembered her poetry. However, there is no doubt that “keen” and “heart-piercing” are much more appropriate epithets to describe the song of the nightingale than that of the lark, which Tolkien likens her song to at this point of the narrative (p.165).  

Rather interestingly, in the earliest-surviving version of the ‘Tale of Tinúviel’ the name of Lúthien does not even appear, and Tinúviel is her given name. In the emerging mythology Lúthien was originally the name the elves of Tol Eressёa gave to a male character – Ælfwine. So, the nickname Tinúviel, the word for nightingale, predates the invention of the name Lúthien by several years. 

In the Silmarillion Lúthien arrives at Tol-in-Gaurhoth where Beren lies imprisoned and demoralised by Sauron.  When she sings he imagines the stars shining above his head and nightingales singing in the trees.  This gives him the brief strength to sing “a song of challenge that he had made in praise of the Seven Stars”, which are a sign of the fall of Morgoth.  Beren collapses after the effort of singing, but his song revealed his presence, and in turn leads Lúthien to sing a song of greater power, which causes Sauron to send out a series of wolves, which are each defeated by Huan, until Sauron cloaks himself in the form of a werewolf, and after an epic struggle he is forced to abandon his stronghold to Lúthien, who is then able to rescue Beren.  In this example the nightingales are linked with a dream-world, but one which permits the ‘dreamer’ to accomplish a final act of defiance, which eventually leads to his subsequent liberation. 

Although the connection between Lúthien and nightingales is the most obvious example, her mother, Melian, is also strongly linked to this species.  In The Silmarillion Melian originally lives in Lórien in Valinor where she is said to have taught nightingales their song, so that they “sang about her wherever she went” (p.30).  Melian left Valinor when the Quendi woke and she brought her nightingales with her and “she filled the silence of Middle-earth before the dawn with her voice and the voices of her birds” (p.55).  Later, King Elwë (Thingol) was passing Nan Elmoth when he hears nightingales.  His search for the birds leads him directly to Melian where he falls under an enchantment.  Tolkien therefore uses nightingales here both to increase the romantic aspects of the narrative, but also as a direct means – it doesn’t feel quite appropriate to use the phrase “plot device” – of bringing Thingol to Melian, and in due course the birth of Lúthien.  On this occasion nightingales could also be argued to be an unwitting partial agent of eventual disaster.  Once Thingol falls under Melian’s spell he is described as “lost” and “he forgot then utterly all his people” (Ibid.).  Therefore, from the point of view of the Teleri, it could be argued that Thingol’s role as leader of his people has been fatally undermined because he heeded the songsters.  If he had continued to lead his people then it is possible that the future disastrous consequences of the kinslaying would never have taken place, nor ultimately the sacking of Doriath. 

A Nightingale at its most drab

The earliest surviving reference to nightingales in Tolkien’s posthumously published writings is in the apparently unsophisticated poem ‘You and Me and the Cottage of Lost Play’ (April 1915), which merely includes the brief name-check: “while all about the nightingales/were singing in the trees” (BOLT1, p.28).  The quote above survived intact into the latest version of the poem which may have been worked on as late as 1962.  In this situation Tolkien seems to have merely utilised the nightingale to enhance the romantic atmosphere of the couple in the poem.  John Garth has argued convincingly that the boy and girl in the poem are representations of Tolkien and Edith as children, so this is another earlier-written instance of Edith and Ronald being associated with these typical birds of romantic love (Garth, p.72). 

Later, in the link between The Cottage of Lost Play and The Music of the Ainur, just before going to sleep, Eriol (who later became Ælfwine) hears the sudden song of a nightingale through the open window.  The song seems to bleed into his dreams because he heard a music in the dream: “thinner and more pure than any he heard before, and it was full of longing” (Ibid, p.46).  There then follows Tolkien’s most evocative description of the images conveyed by the nightingale’s song: 

“it was if pipes of silver or flutes of shape most slender-delicate uttered crystal notes and 

threadlike harmonies beneath the moon upon the lawns.” (Ibid.) 

In this preliminary introduction to the cosmology the nightingales could be argued to act as a bridge between Eriol’s world of mankind, and the first description of the much earlier Music of the Ainur, although this conception was subsequently dropped. 

An occurrence in Tolkien’s own childhood predates the use of the species in his fiction. Tolkien’s young cousins, Marjorie and Mary Incledon, invented a language which they called ‘Animalic’, in which “nightingale” was seemingly chosen rather arbitrarily as an equivalent to the English word “are” (A Secret Vice, p.9 and note 18).  So far, so seemingly trivial, but is it coincidental that one of the first words one of Tolkien’s characters learns on encountering another language seems to echo Tolkien’s childhood experience?  In the surviving text of The Lost Road Alboin has a series of dreams from which he awakes and remembers fragments of a new language.  One of the earliest words he learns is lömelindё, which he realises means nightingale (p.41).  Alboin is a budding philologist, and there are a number of similarities between his character and that of Tolkien.  Whether Tolkien deliberately linked his own youthful experience of the nightingale in the very primitive childish new language of his cousins, with that of his character encountering a far more advanced well-considered imaginary language seems possible, but probably cannot be established with any certainty. 

Nightingale - note the tongue, which used to be a continental delicacy!

Later, in The Lost Road Elendil and his son are discussing the consequences of Sauron’s arrival on Númenor, when a nightingale (lómelindё) suddenly bursts into song. The adjective Tolkien selects to describe the song is “thrilling”, which although completely appropriate is not a typical response, unless one has actually had a personal experience of the bird suddenly rending the darkness of the evening with its heart-stopping song.  The nightingale’s song is then joined by the voice of the maiden Fíriel, singing from a high position, which seems to silence the bird.  While the nightingale was described as “thrilling”, the word which appears twice in association with Fíriel’s is “sadly” (pp.2-3).  It seems likely that Fíriel was going to reappear in the narrative, but the significance of her role and any comparison with the nightingale remain conjectural as the fragment of The Lost Road ends before she makes a reappearance.  In the surviving rudimentary notes provided by Christopher Tolkien, there is no further mention of her role, so it is possible Fíriel was merely added as a melancholy counterpoint to the thrilling nightingale in a fragment which already includes many hints of approaching calamity. 

From the single reference in The Lord of the Rings it would appear that Tolkien merely uses the nightingale to enhance the romantic credentials of the story being related, but when some of the posthumously published references are considered a more complex picture emerges.  Yes, Tolkien often highlights the virtuosity of its song, but its use in other texts implies a greater significance.  In The Lost Road the use of nightingale is a means of beginning to assemble the building-blocks of an unfamiliar (imaginary) language, which can be seen to have a vague autobiographical link to the author’s own early unsteady attempts at understanding an imaginary language.  Of course as several of the narratives in which nightingales appeared remained unfinished, it isn’t always possible to judge if Tolkien had a more nuanced role in mind for this species.  The cumulative effect of the nightingale being mentioned in such a great number of texts makes one wonder if the species had a totemic importance for Tolkien.  The implications of the word nightingale in each text taken together resonates in the mind of this reader out of all proportion to the amount of text allocated to this truly iconic songster.  This spring why not try to have an aural encounter with this enigmatic, magical species before it is lost as a British breeding bird, and muse on and remember the scenes in Tolkien’s writings in which the song is mentioned? 

Nightingale - An Overshooting Migrant at Spurn 2009

Appendix 

Tolkien Texts in which Nightingales are mentioned 
The Lord of the Rings: 50th Anniversary Edition, London: Harper Collins, 2004.
The Silmarillion, edited by Christopher Tolkien, London: George Allen & Unwin, 1977.
The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, edited by Humphrey Carpenter, London: George Allen & Unwin, 1981.
The Monsters and the Critics & Other Essays, edited by Christopher Tolkien, London: 1982.
Roverandom, edited by Wayne Hammond & Christina Scull, London: HarperCollins, 1998.
A Secret Vice: Tolkien on Invented Languages, edited by Dimitra Fimi & Andrew Higgins, HarperCollins, 2016.

The History of Middle-earth 
The Book of Lost Tales: Part 1, edited by Christopher Tolkien, London: George Allen & Unwin, 1983.
The Book of Lost Tales: Part 2, edited by Christopher Tolkien, London: George Allen & Unwin, 1984
The Lays of Beleriand, edited by Christopher Tolkien, London: George Allen & Unwin, 1985.
The Shaping of Middle-earth, edited by Christopher Tolkien, London: George Allen & Unwin, 1986
The Lost Road, edited by Christopher Tolkien, London: Unwin Hyman, 1987.
Sauron Defeated, edited by Christopher Tolkien, London: HarperCollins, 1992.
Morgoth’s Ring, edited by Christopher Tolkien, London: HarperCollins, 1993.
The War of the Jewels, edited by Christopher Tolkien, London: Harper Collins, 1994.

Other Works Consulted 
Humphrey Carpenter, J.R.R. Tolkien: a Biography, London: George Allen & Unwin, 1977.
Dimitra Fimi, Tolkien, Race and Cultural History: From Fairies to Hobbits, Palgrave Macmillan, 2010.
John Garth, Tolkien and the Great War, London: HarperCollins, 2003.
Wayne Hammond & Christina Scull, The J.R.R. Tolkien Companion & Guide: A Reader’s Guide, London: HarperCollins, 2006.
Phil Mathison, Tolkien in East Yorkshire: Newport: Dead Good, 2012.

Nightingale Sources
Mabey, Richard. Whistling in the Dark: in Pursuit of the Nightingale, London: Vintage, 1993.
Cocker, Mark & Richard Mabey (eds.), Birds Britannica, London: Chatto & Windus, 2005.
Chas A. Holt, Chris M. Hewson & Robert J. Fuller, “The Nightingale in Britain: Status, Ecology & Conservation needs” in British Birds, Vol. 105, pp.172-187, 2012.

Tolkien's Hemlock Glade, Part 2

A Hemlock Glade, The Houses of Healing, Two Towers and a Beacon: Tolkien in East Yorkshire, Part 2: Roos (& Halsham)

Please note the text explaining the latest findings about Tolkien and Roos may be read in my essay ‘Tolkien in East Yorkshire’ published in Something Has Gone Crack edited by Janet Brennan Croft & Annika Röttinger.

Cow Parsley in Roos Churchyard - May 2014

 Cow Parsley & fresh Beech leaves in Roos Churchyard - May 2015

Modern map of Roos with Dents Garth marked to the upper right (north-east) of the church

Roos

Railings surrounding the crypt stairs at the north-east corner of Roos Church (2015)

Ivy & ferns covering subterranean stairs to a crypt before undergrowth was cleared (c) 2006 Paul Glazzard

Heraldic Device of the Sykes family

Detail of the hand from the Sykes' family Heraldic Shield 

Tolkien's sketch of Beren's heraldic device

Three-trunked Lime Tree in Roos churchyard

Three-trunked Lime Tree surrounded by Cow Parsley

The almost dry course of Roos Beck - 25th May 2015

Halsham

Victorian Map showing relative densities of Roos & Halsam

Halsham Mausoleum

Halsham Mausoleum

Halsham House

North-facing alcove on Halsham Hoiuse containing a statue of the Virgin Mary.  Some of the cement work looks modern, so is the alcove a relatively modern feature, or has it just been recently repaired?

Part 1 (Introduction & Hornsea) may be read here

Part 3 (Thirtle Bridge & Withernsea) may be read here

Part 4 (Brooklands Officers' Hospital & Godwin Battery) may be read here

Part 5 (Easington & Spurn Point) may be read here  

My thanks to Marcel Aubron-Bülles, Jerry Aurand, Chris Delworth-Kerr, Linda Flowers, John Garth, Phil Mathison with whom I was able to consult on various aspects of my research while I was writing this paper.   

Footnotes

11. Mathison, p.34.

12. Carpenter, Humphrey (ed.) with Christopher Tolkien, The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, (George Allen & Unwin, 1981), p.221.

13. Ibid, p.345.

14. Ibid, p.420.

15. J.R.R. Tolkien, The Book of Lost Tales, Part Two, (ed.) Christopher Tolkien (George Allen & Unwin, 1984) p.11.

16. Ibid, p.18.

17. Tolkien Society Facebook page, 29 May 2015.

18. Rooster, 147, 148, 150 [July, Aug, Oct 2007].

19. J.R.R. Tolkien, Silmarillion, (ed.) Christopher Tolkien (George Allen & Unwin, 1977) p.358 & p.329.

20. Garth, p.237.

21. Kent, p.93.

22. Allison, p.39.

23. Ibid, p.32.

24.  J.R.R. Tolkien, Sauron Defeated, (ed.) Christopher Tolkien (George Allen & Unwin, 1992), p.367.

25. Ibid, p.384.

26. Mathison, p.12.

27. Ibid, p.56.

Tolkien's Ghostly Presence

 This blogpost would not have been possible without the diligent research initially by John Garth, and subsequently by local author Phil Mathison

When childhood images crowd in upon my mind they include days spent on a beautifully sandy, virtually deserted beach during the summer holidays; a remote country churchyard surrounded by beautifully-shaped yew hedges and trees; and many visits to Yorkshire’s largest natural freshwater lake.  Later, when I left school these images were augmented by the scene of a shabby-looking building as viewed in between customers through a plate-glass bank window, and a decade afterwards my car being broken into and raided outside a building surrounded by leafy, sycamore trees.  What these mundane memories evoke seems banal enough, but rather surprisingly each one is connected with places known intimately by that master of modern fantasy writing, the author of The Lord of the Rings almost a century ago.

 All Saints’ Church, Roos.  View from the west looking along the Yew Avenue to the Church.

 Easington Cliffs and beach looking south towards Kilnsea.

My parents took us every summer to the virtually deserted beaches at Spurn Point or Kilnsea because they had an aversion to crowded resorts.  The peninsula is dotted with strange gun emplacements, watch towers, and fragments of railway line that seem to emerge from nowhere, continue for a few yards, and then disappear into nothingness again.  These were very intriguing and mysterious to a child, but I knew that they were related to wartime activity.  However,  it was only many years later that I discovered that J.R.R. Tolkien was stationed at Kilnsea, and nearby Easington in the First World War as part of the garrison guarding the East Yorkshire Coast.  While I secreted and lost a fifty pence piece given to me for my birthday among the crumbling defences on the East coast in the 1970s, more than half a century earlier Tolkien had been in the same vicinity, but with a much more serious object in view, helping to protect the coast against possible foreign incursions. 

Easington Cliffs looking south towards Kilnsea.  The barbed wire compound is reminiscent of how this stretch of coast may have looked in 1917-18. 

 Similarly, while my father was involved in heavy physical labour in Roos churchyard and I watched enthralled nearby as a Spotted Flycatcher took off on one of its amazingly versatile sorties in pursuit of a specific insect, I was completely unaware that Tolkien was inspired by his wife’s dance only a few hundred yards away, and over fifty years earlier to write one of his most personally felt, and satisfying mythological tales.  Likewise, many childhood visits were made to the beautiful Hornsea Mere to observe the wildfowl and other birds in absolute ignorance that Tolkien resided there for a time, and probably underwent firearms training nearby.  Likewise, when Hull University staff from the Dennison Centre reported my car being broken into, when it was parked outside, I was blithely ignorant that one of my favourite authors spent several months convalescing inside the building, as his huge mythological edifice began to cohere and take shape.  

The Dennison Centre Cottingham Road, Hull. Previously Brooklands Officers’ Hospital, as taken from the entrance to the University of Hull.

 It must have been in 1981 on publication of the Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien that I became aware that a small village called Roos was mentioned three times.  Could this actually be the same tiny place I was taken as a child when my father was employed in heavy physical labour within the churchyard?  On further investigation it was clear Tolkien’s Roos was identical to the one I knew in East Yorkshire.  I can still recall how surprised I was to learn that Tolkien was inspired to write about the Elven princess Lúthien Tinúviel by watching his young wife dance for him in a wood near the seemingly-insignificant Roos.  Shortly afterwards I read Humphrey Carpenter’s J.R.R. Tolkien: A Biography for the first time even though it had been published several years earlier.  It became clearer from the biography that Tolkien was stationed for a brief period in the Roos area, and also convalesced for a time at Brooklands Officers’ Hospital in Hull, but the account is very brief, and from the breezy tone of the book, the war period, despite the inherent and obvious dangers doesn’t appear as being especially significant in Tolkien’s long life and writing career.  Not long after reading the biography my school days came to an end and after a few years spent stamping Hull people’s cheques and credits, and even on one occasion having to bellow at Philip Larkin in a bank on Cottingham Road, I was transferred to Withernsea, a bleak and rundown town on Yorkshire’s east coast.  It was to be nearly another two decades before I realised that even this location had a Tolkien connection.  I had no idea when I glanced out of the window between customers at a bank in Withernsea I was looking directly into the doorway of Edith Tolkien’s 1917 lodging house.  

The view from the bank's window: 76 Queen Street, Withernsea.  Edith Tolkien lodged here from 12^th July – 21^st August 1917.

 The entrance to the lodging house in 1917 was on the far left of this building.

Five years of drudgery in Withernsea made me wish to resume my higher education, and I enrolled in an English Language and Literature course at the University of Hull.  Tolkien had a very low profile here, so I was surprised to see a copy of The Lord of the Rings on my favourite tutor’s bookshelf, but his fiction wasn’t available to be studied on any of the existing modules.  It may have been for this reason that I chose Old English, and at least here Tolkien’s importance as a Beowulf scholar was emphasized.  As a mature student I was one of the relatively few students with a car, and if I was only visiting the library or campus for a brief period my early morning parking spot was just outside the Dennison Centre.  However, a further Tolkien connection was not learned until nearly 20 years after graduation.  

The Dennison Centre Cottingham Road, Hull. Previously Brooklands Officers’ Hospital.  The hospital was on the right (west side) of this building.

 The Dennison Centre Cottingham Road, Hull. Previously Brooklands Officers’ Hospital.  The rear view, from the gardens.

The vague hints of Tolkien’s stay in East Yorkshire and correspondences with locations in my own life didn’t really coalesce until after I first read John Garth’s Tolkien and the Great War.  This work concentrated a lot more on Tolkien’s time in the area than Carpenter.  One also gets the impression that Garth actually visited the East Yorkshire locations and understood how these unique landscapes affected and inspired a writer in a way Carpenter’s rather “Oxford-centric” approach never does.  Indeed, although Garth is a professional journalist his prose takes on an almost poetic quality at times, especially when he is describing the eerie qualities of the topography and the fragility of the Holderness peninsula.  Garth quietly modifies some of Carpenter’s incorrect dating of events, and provides more detail to the bones of the original skeletal biographical account.  For instance, the dating of the inspirational dance at Roos is changed from 1918 to spring 1917, and Tolkien’s time at Thirtle Bridge, Easington and Hornsea is fleshed out, and Brooklands is identified as being on Cottingham Road in Hull.  Although I know many tiny nooks and crannies in Holderness, I had never even heard of Thirtle Bridge before reading Garth’s book.  This wasn’t surprising as Thirtle Bridge was a temporary army camp, only constructed for purposes of war, and not likely to leave a large architectural legacy.  Garth highlights just what Tolkien was working on at his time in East Yorkshire, and includes several very acute analyses of specific poems and his emerging mythology, explaining just how and why they were affected and influenced.   

Thirtle Bridge Officers’ Mess, now renamed Mona House, and much extended and altered.  The original officers’ mess was on the site of the left-hand side of the present building.

Thirtle Bridge Cookhouse, now used as a barn.

 Finally, in 2012 a slim local volume was published which filled in several of the remaining blank spaces, and coincidentally hammered home the personal resonances for me.  Unlike Carpenter’s breezy style, and Garth’s poetic journalistic combination, Phil Mathison’s meticulous workmanlike research sifted every available scrap of postcard, envelope, and war office medical board report in order to tease out as far as is possible an exact chronology and itinerary of Tolkien’s time in East Yorkshire.  Therefore we learn of the exact addresses at which Edith and Jennie Grove lodged in Hornsea and Withernsea and for how long.  Mathison even manages to locate some structures on the Thirtle Bridge site, and proves that a couple of them have managed to survive into the 21^st-century.  Mathison also manages to pinpoint the precise modern-day location of Brooklands Officers’ Hospital, which turns out to be my favourite university parking place, immediately opposite the university entrance!  Mathison also reveals that Tolkien was treated at a second hospital at the Godwin Battery right on the edge of the thundering North Sea.  This was the most surprising revelation of all for me, because for the last decade I’ve been leading my students past the exact spot on the way to watch some of Britain’s most threatened breeding sea birds.

Hornsea – the most picturesque approach.  Tolkien’s fascination with place-names would have told him that Hornsea’s name was derived from its development near its inland sea – the mere – not its proximity to the German Ocean. 

 1 Bank Terrace, Hornsea.  Edith Tolkien and her cousin Jennie Grove lodged here from 1^st May – 1^st June 1917.

 Blue Plaque on 1 Bank Terrace, Hornsea. NB Jennie Grove is incorrectly said to be Tolkien’s cousin, and her first name is also spelled incorrectly.

 View from Dents Garth, Roos looking towards Thirtle Bridge.

 Golden Sands Caravan Park, Kilnsea.  The site of the Godwin battery hospital was just behind the notice.

It is now possible after Mathison’s research to follow in Tolkien footsteps in East Yorkshire, although wartime restrictions on information mean that some details still remain a little vague.  We know that Tolkien was expected locally any time after 27^th November 1916, but he didn’t actually arrive in East Yorkshire until 19^th April 1917.  Shortly afterwards Edith lodged at 1 Bank Terrace, Hornsea, while she thought Tolkien was going to be based at the nearby Hornsea musktry camp.  However, when it became clear he was more likely to be stationed at the more distant Thirtle Bridge Camp she left Hornsea.  There is no extant correspondence for the six weeks after Edith left Bank Terrace, so either letters have been lost, or there was no need for letters.  It is possible that the young married couple may have been able to stay together for those six weeks.  At the end of this time Edith took lodgings in Withernsea, which was only 3 miles from Tolkien at Thirtle Bridge.  In May 1917 Edith danced near Roos, and the inspiration for Lúthien and Beren was sparked.  On the 13^th of August Tolkien was admitted to Brooklands officers’ Hospital for the first time.  In total he spent more than twenty weeks of his eighteen months in the region in those congenial surroundings. It was at Brooklands that he was able to devote the longest concentrated time on his emerging mythology than at any earlier period.  In that time he wrote the first versions of ‘The Tale of Tinúviel’ and ‘The Tale of Turambar.’  These are arguably the two most important and central narratives which make up The Silmarillion, and they were to take hold of Tolkien’s imaginative writing for decades to come.  While Tolkien was hospitalised he was under the auspices of local land-owner Margaret Strickland-Constable.  She was a keen linguistic herself, apparently proficient in German, French, Swedish, Norwegian and Danish, and one wonders if she and the putative author discussed this common connection?  It is known that Tolkien consolidated his knowledge of Italian and Spanish, and even began to study Russian while he was hospitalised.  Of course Tolkien’s invented languages play a crucial part in his developing stories and he was also able to devote a lot of time expanding his lexicon and grammar of Qenya and Goldogrin, thus providing a substantial linguistic groundwork for his imaginative world.    

Margaret Strickland-Constable (1863-1961).  Operated the Brooklands Officers’ Hospital in Hull when Tolkien was hospitalised.

After Mathison’s research there may not be much more new material to unearth regarding Tolkien’s time in East Yorkshire, but we can always remain hopeful.  Some intriguing loose ends do still remain.  For instance, when Tolkien was in the Humber Garrison he travelled to Dunstable to sit a Signalling Course exam in the second half of July 1917.  Were Tolkien’s duties as a signalling officer connected in any way with the largest surviving remnant of the Great War in Holderness?  This is something which remained unmentioned by both Garth and Mathison.  In 1916, or possibly 1917, according to local historian Jan Crowther, an Acoustic Sound Mirror was erected at Kilnsea to listen out for approaching zeppelins and other aircraft.  The sound was focussed by the concave dish to the “collector’s head” mounted on the metal pipe still visible in modern photographs, on which was a rudimentary microphone.  Wires from this led down to a trench in which an operator with headphones would listen for approaching aircraft, and would provide an early warning.  We will probably never know if Tolkien was one of those “listeners”, but even if not, when he was in Kilnsea he could not have failed to see this brutal, monumental concrete structure.  Incidentally, this 16-feet high piece of concrete remains the only listed building in Kilnsea. 

Acoustic Sound Mirror, Kilnsea.  Installed 1916/17.  Would a Signalling Officer have used this to monitor approaching aircraft?

Acoustic Sound Mirror, Kilnsea. The post which held the rudimentary microphone may be seen directly in front of the dish.

Obviously Oxford, and the outskirts of Birmingham are pre-eminently important in understanding Tolkien’s life and work, but East Yorkshire, although much more briefly connected to Tolkien, still played a crucial part at a very difficult period in his life, and as an inspiration for the foundation of his emerging mythology.  Philip Larkin famously liked Hull, because it was away from the literary salons of London, and because it was out on the edge of things.  However, Hull’s isolation doesn’t always work in its favour.  Hull and Holderness are often sidelined from the mainstream because of their particular geological location, but at the moment they also seem to getting continually sidelined by the less concrete assertions of other localities.  Among these the Burren in Ireland and Stoneyhurst College in Lancashire seem to be garnering plenty of media attention in newspaper articles, but if you examine their claims in detail it is evident that the texts they were meant to have inspired were virtually completed by the time Tolkien visited those locations.  Further afield the claims of Ethiopia and Pawneeland as the ‘real’ inspirations for Middle-earth have spawned book-length theses bolstering their claims.  In contrast, Tolkien’s time in East Yorkshire occurred at a tumultuous period in world history, but also at a significant period in both his personal life and literary development.  Despite the threatening presence of Zeppelins appearing on the Yorkshire coast, Tolkien was able to spend a brief idyllic time with his young wife on the outskirts of Roos, until the peripatetic life of an army wife and Tolkien’s own ill health became too much for Edith, and she returned to Cheltenham to give birth to her first child.  More importantly for literary history the dance in an unassuming quiet village in East Yorkshire to use Tolkien’s own words inspired the “kernel of the mythology, the matter of Lúthien Tinúviel and Beren, arose from a small woodland glade filled with ‘hemlocks’ (or other while umbellifers) near Roos on the Holderness peninsula.”  To those who are interested in one of the genuine inspirations for Tolkien’s imaginative fiction, Roos and associated localities in East Yorkshire will hopefully one day take their rightful place behind Birmingham and Oxford, but ahead of what amounts to barely more than fraudulent claims by other locations, as an important milestone on the Tolkien literary trail.  

Cow Parsley in Roos churchyard May 2014. 

Hull’s appointment as City of Culture occurs in 2017, which coincides with the centenary of Tolkien’s tenure in the area, and more significantly the centenary of the genesis of the Beren and Lúthien story in the May of 2017.  Hopefully, some enterprising Tolkien aficionado will ensure that an event will be organised to celebrate and commemorate this momentous literary occasion.

Some Other Holderness Locations:

The Two Towers of Easington:

‘The Tower’, Easington.  In 1917-18 Robert Walker, the owner, rented his properties to army families.

 The Old Coastguard House, Easington.  Local landmark.

 Tunstall Hall.  During WW1 used as Officers’ headquarters and lodgings for officers.

 Roos, North side of Dents Garth looking south.

Roos, South side of Dents Garth looking north.

 Plaques on Blue Bell, Kilnsea. They illustrate the destructive  power of the North Sea. 

 North Side of the Blue Bell, Kilnsea.  This was a public house when Tolkien was at the nearby Godwin Battery.

 All Saints’ Church, Roos.  View of the north side including watch tower.