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Places in Middle-earth

Eastfarthing, The

Type: Kingdoms, Realms, Lands

Region: Bree/The Shire

Location: The easternmost district of the original Shire; bounded on the east by the Brandywine River and bisected by the Great East Road; settled by Stoors from Dunland, who built above-ground buildings; known for the cultivation of mushrooms and quarrying.

Description: The Shire was divided into four quarters, the Farthings..., North, South, East, and West.... Outside the Farthings were the East and West Marches....

The Fellowship of the Ring, LoTR Prologue, Of the Ordering of the Shire

The habit of building farmhouses and barns was said to have begun among the inhabitants of the Marish down by the Brandywine. The Hobbits of that quarter, the Eastfarthing, were rather large and heavy-legged, and they wore dwarf-boots in muddy weather. But they were well known to be Stoors in a large part of their blood, as indeed was shown by the down that many grew on their chins. No Harfoot or Fallohide had any trace of a beard. Indeed, the folk of the Marish, and of Buckland, east of the River, which they afterwards occupied, came for the most part later into the Shire up from south-away; and they still had many peculiar names and strange words not found elsewhere in the Shire.

The Fellowship of the Ring, LoTR Prologue, Concerning Hobbits

Soon they struck a narrow road, that went rolling up and down...: the road to Woodhall, and Stock, and the Bucklebury Ferry. It ... wound over the skirts of the Green Hills towards Woody-End, a wild corner of the Eastfarthing.

The Fellowship of the Ring, LoTR Book 1, Ch 3, Three Is Company

They went down the slope, and across the stream where it dived under the road, and up the next slope, and up and down another shoulder of the hills ...

After some miles..., the road ceased to roll up and down: it climbed to the top of a steep bank in a weary zig-zagging sort of way, and then prepared to go down for the last time. In front of them they saw the lower lands dotted with small clumps of trees that melted away in the distance to a brown woodland haze. They were looking across the Woody End towards the Brandywine River.

The Fellowship of the Ring, LoTR Book 1, Ch 3, Three Is Company

... they came back to the road at the end of the long level over which it had run straight for some miles. At that point it bent left and went down into the lowlands of the Yale making for Stock; but a lane branched right, winding through a wood of ancient oak-trees on its way to Woodhall.

The Fellowship of the Ring, LoTR Book 1, Ch 3, Three Is Company

'For tonight we go to the woods on the hills above Woodhall.' ...

The woods on either side became denser; the trees were now younger and thicker; and as the lane went lower, running down into a fold of the hills, there were many deep brakes of hazel on the rising slopes at either hand. At last the Elves turned aside from the path. A green ride lay almost unseen through the thickets on the right; and this they followed as it wound away back up the wooded slopes on to the top of a shoulder of the hills that stood out into the lower land of the river-valley. Suddenly they came out of the shadow of the trees, and before them lay a wide space of grass.... On three sides the woods pressed upon it; but eastward the ground fell steeply and the tops of the dark trees, growing at the bottom of the slope, were below their feet. Beyond, the low lands lay dim and flat under the stars. Nearer at hand a few lights twinkled in the village of Woodhall.

The Fellowship of the Ring, LoTR Book 1, Ch 3, Three Is Company

'The Ferry is east from Woodhall; but the hard road curves away to the left.... It goes round the north end of the Marish so as to strike the causeway from the Bridge above Stock.' ...

'The country is rough round here, and there are bogs and all kinds of difficulties down in the Marish' ...

The hobbits scrambled down a steep green bank and plunged into the thick trees below. Their course had been chosen to leave Woodhall to their left, and to cut slanting through the woods that clustered along the eastern side of the hills, until they reached the flats beyond. Then they could make straight for the Ferry over country that was open, except for a few ditches and fences. Frodo reckoned they had eighteen miles to go in a straight line.

He soon found that the thicket was closer and more tangled than it had appeared. There were no paths in the undergrowth, and they did not get on very fast. When they had struggled to the bottom of the bank, they found a stream running down from the hills behind in a deeply dug bed with steep slippery sides overhung with brambles. ...

The banks of the stream sank, as it reached the levels and became broader and shallower, wandering off towards the Marish and the River.

'Why, this is the Stock-brook!' said Pippin. ...

They waded the stream, and hurried over a wide open space, rush-grown and treeless, on the further side. Beyond that they came again to a belt of trees: tall oaks, for the most part, with here and there an elm tree or an ash. The ground was fairly level, and there was little undergrowth; but the trees were too close for them to see far ahead.

The Fellowship of the Ring, LoTR Book 1, Ch 4, A Short Cut to Mushrooms

Before long the wood came to a sudden end. Wide grass-lands stretched before them. ... Away over the flats they could glimpse the low hill of Bucklebury across the River....

... the land became steadily more tame and well-ordered. Soon they came into well-tended fields and meadows: there were hedges and gates and dikes for drainage. Everything seemed quiet and peaceful, just an ordinary corner of the Shire. ...

They passed along the edge of a huge turnip-field, and came to a stout gate. Beyond it a rutted lane ran between low well-laid hedges towards a distant clump of trees. ...

'I know these fields and this gate!' [Pippin] said. 'This is Bamfurlong, old Farmer Maggot's land. That's his farm away there in the trees.' ...

They went along the lane, until they saw the thatched roofs of a large house and farm-buildings peeping out among the trees ahead. The Maggots, and the Puddifoots of Stock, and most of the inhabitants of the Marish, were house-dwellers; and this farm was stoutly built of brick and had a high wall all round it. There was a wide wooden gate opening out of the wall into the lane.

The Fellowship of the Ring, LoTR Book 1, Ch 4, A Short Cut to Mushrooms

It was five miles or more from Maggot's lane to the Ferry. ...

They reached the entrance to the Ferry lane at last. It was marked by two tall white posts that suddenly loomed up on their right.

The Fellowship of the Ring, LoTR Book 1, Ch 4, A Short Cut to Mushrooms

They turned down the Ferry lane, which was straight and well-kept and edged with large white-washed stones. In a hundred yards or so it brought them to the river-bank, where there was a broad wooden landing-stage. A large flat ferry-boat was moored beside it. The white bollards near the water's edge glimmered in the light of two lamps on high posts. Behind them the mists in the flat fields were now above the hedges....

The Fellowship of the Ring, LoTR Book 1, Ch 5, A Conspiracy Unmasked

'All right!' said Pippin. ... 'I had counted on passing the Golden Perch at Stock before sundown. The best beer in the Eastfarthing, or used to be: it is a long time since I tasted it.' ...

The Fellowship of the Ring, LoTR Book 1, Ch 4, A Short Cut to Mushrooms

... they were drawing near to Frogmorton, a village right on the Road, about twenty-two miles from the Bridge. ... The Floating Log at Frogmorton was a good inn. ...

The Return of the King, LoTR Book 6, Ch 8, The Scouring of the Shire

[Fatty Bolger's] family came from the Eastfarthing, from Budgeford in Bridgefields in fact....

The Fellowship of the Ring, LoTR Book 1, Ch 5, A Conspiracy Unmasked

[Fatty Bolger] had been taken when the ruffians smoked out a band of rebels that he led from their hidings up in the Brockenbores by the hills of Scary.

The Return of the King, LoTR Book 6, Ch 9, The Grey Havens

Great stores of goods and food, and beer, were found that had been hidden away by the ruffians ... in the old quarries at Scary....

The Return of the King, LoTR Book 6, Ch 9, The Grey Havens

Hobbits have a passion for mushrooms, surpassing even the greediest likings of Big People. A fact which partly explains young Frodo's long expeditions to the renowned fields of the Marish, and the wrath of the injured Maggot.

The Fellowship of the Ring, LoTR Book 1, Ch 5, A Conspiracy Unmasked

Contributors: Elena Tiriel 29Oct05

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