December 3 (India Today) – Celebrated and legendary author of The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit, JRR Tolkien’s long-time home has re-entered the market. The author’s fans and actors, who starred in the films adapted from his books, have come together to start a crowd-funding campaign to restore, purchase and turn the property into a Tolkien museum.
FANS AND THE LORD OF THE RINGS AND HOBBIT STARS REUNITE TO SAVE JRR TOLKIEN’S HOME
Actors like Sir Ian McKellen, who played Gandalf, and Martin Freeman, who played Bilbo Baggins, are embarking on another epic adventure by asking fans to help preserve the UK property and give it a new life. Other celebrities joining the cause are John Rhys-Davies, Sir Derek Jacobi and singer, Annie Lennox. The group effort is aiming to start a three-month campaign, that started on Wednesday, to save the house and raise at least USD 5.3 million to buy it.
To help the initiative, the actors even came together to help create a video. Take a look:
The non-profit group effort is being called Project Northmoor, named after the house at 20 Northmoor Road on the outskirts of Oxford, England. Tolkien lived at the house from 1930 to 1947 with his wife Edith and their four children. It was at this house where he wrote The Hobbit and much of the Lord of the Rings trilogy.
After buying the house, the group aims to set up a literary centre there devoted to Tolkien studies. Julia Golding, the British novelist who is spearheading the purchase, told The New York Times, “The worldwide Tolkien fan base is enormous, but there is no centre for Tolkien anywhere in the world. There are centres for Jane Austen, Charles Dickens and Thomas Hardy, and, arguably, Tolkien is just as influential as they are.”
The residence had entered the market for the first time in more than two decades last year, for nearly USD 6 million. The current owners had bought the house for 1.6 million pounds in 2004. The two-story structure was built in 1924 for Basil Blackwell, a well-known Oxford bookseller.
