J.R.R. Tolkien Lived Here

Earlier this week I was walking down a street in Headington, a village on the outskirts of Oxford, when I noticed this plaque on a house:  "J.R.R. Tolkien lived Here 1953-1968"

Tolkien attended  Exeter College, Oxford in 1910, and returned to Oxford briefly after the First World War to work for the Oxford English Dictionary.

In 1945 Tolkien came back to Oxford when he was appointed to the Merton Chair of English language and literature, which he held until his retirement in 1959. He lived at 20 Northmoor Road from 1945 to 1953, and then moved into 76 Sandfield Road, Headington, where he lived until 1968.

He used the garage as his office and it was here where he wrote the Lord of the Rings trilogy.  In 1968, the attentions of the fans at his Sandfield Road home drove Tolkien to flee from Headington to Bournemouth, where he remained until his death in 1973. I guess he was the J.K. Rowling of his day!

The following books in the Lord of the Rings series were published while Tolkien lived in the house on Sandfield Road:

• The Fellowship of the Ring (1954)
• The Two Towers (1954)
• The Return of the King (1955)