His writing room over the garage

Even Professor Tolkien, celebrated author and fantasy hero to millions was relegated to a lowly home spun library over the family garage!

“Somewhere quiet, without a lot of relatives hanging on the bell all day. I might find somewhere where I can finish my book!”

The Telegraph recently posted excerpts from an interview with Professor Tolkien conducted in 1968. What caught my eye was a description of his writing room located in the garage of his home.

Though Tolkien may not have understood the term ‘Man Cave’ being a rather recent addition to our popular lexicon, he would have understood it’s definition. Here is is how webster defines the term “Man Cave”

Definition of MAN CAVE: a room or space (as in a basement, garage or attic) designed according to the taste of the man of the house to be used as his personal area for hobbies and leisure activities.

In this article there is a brief description of Tolkien’s Man Cave as described by Charlotte and Denis Plimmer…

“When John Ronald Reuel Tolkien leads you into the cramped garage that serves as library, he leads you at once into the magic and legend of Middle-earth, the three-dimensional cosmogony of The Lord of the Rings. Not that the garage itself is any cave of wonders. Jammed between the Professor’s own house and the one next door, in an undistinguished Oxford suburb, it would be no more than a banal little room, filled with files and a clutter of garden chairs, if it were not for the man.”

In March of 1968 Tolkien was sill living at his Sandfield Road home during the years when The Lord of the Rings was being published. In his little hidway over the garage, he could smoke his pipe and write his books!

Here are some photos of the exterior of the house to get a good look at Professors Tolkien’s man cave!