Moseley Bog, today part of The Shire Country Park, has been named the UK’s top hidden spot. In a survey of bloggers, J.R.R. Tolkien’s childhood haunt beat locations from across the UK to take the top spot.
Nick Hammond, chief executive at The Wildlife Trust for Birmingham and the Black Country, said:
Anyone who has visited it will know what a special atmosphere it has and how much there is to see there.
With regards to Moseley Bog, Birmingham City Council states:
The internationally celebrated author J.R.R Tolkien was born in South Africa in 1892. Tolkien and his brother spent their childhood in Birmingham with their widowed mother. They first lived in the hamlet of Sarehole, which Tolkien said were the happiest years of his youth. Sarehole is said to have been the model for The Shire, home to the hobbits.
Now a Local Nature Reserve, Moseley Bog was an ideal place for Tolkien’s childhood adventures. It is an ancient place with Bronze Age burnt mounds and a mill pool, probably a storage pool for Sarehole Mill. The bog is recalled in Tolkien’s description of the Old Forest, last of the primeval wild woods where Tom Bombadil lived.
You can read the original story at the Birmingham Mail.
