All this staying at home (and watching episode after episode of Grand Designs) got me thinking about the amazing houses from movies that I’ve always loved and wished I could move into. Does anyone else get fictional house envy?
The home I think the most is Bag End from Lord of the Rings. Even Tolkien’s description of it sounds lovely:
“In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare, sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat: it was a hobbit-hole, and that means comfort.
It had a perfectly round door like a porthole, painted green, with a shiny yellow brass knob in the exact middle. The door opened on to a tube-shaped hall like a tunnel: A very comfortable tunnel without smoke, with paneled walls and floor tiled and carpeted, provide with polished chairs, and lots and lots of pegs for hats and coats — the hobbit was fond of visitors. The tunnel wound on and on, going fairly but not quite straight in to the side of the hill — The Hill, as many people for miles around called it — and many little round doors opened out of it, first on one side then on another. No going upstairs for the hobbit: bedrooms, bathrooms, cellars, pantries (lots of these), wardrobes (he had whole rooms devoted to clothes), kitchens, dining-rooms, all were on the same floor, indeed on the same passage. The best rooms were all on the left-hand side (going in), for these were the only ones to have windows, deep-set round windows looking over his garden, and meadows beyond, sloping down to the river.”
Comfort? Lots of pantries?? Whole rooms devoted to clothes??? Kitchens with an s???? Yes, please! He doesn’t outright say it, but I choose to believe that Bag End also has a room dedicated to a dry sauna, and another that’s just like a traditional Japanese onsen. Surely this is accurate.
The chief inhabitant is of course Bilbo Baggins, and Bag End isn’t necessarily the norm for hobbit homes. It’s perched on top of a hill to command some impressive views, and is described as being particularly large and luxurious. It helps that Bilbo was already “well-to-do” even before the incident with the dragon that left him immeasurably rich.
Aside from not having modern conveniences like electricity or evidence of indoor plumbing, and it being made for little folk whose heights rarely exceeded four-foot-four, this house is the stuff of Max Comfort Dreams. Let’s take a tour, shall we?
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