Merton College & Mob Quad: Tolkien's Fellowship
Why is it significant?
Step through the arched gate into Merton College and look across Mob Quad, widely considered the oldest collegiate quadrangle in Oxford, built between thirteen zero-four and thirteen eleven.
Key Facts
| Place | Merton College & Mob Quad: Tolkien's Fellowship |
|---|---|
| Address | Merton St, Oxford OX1 4JD |
| Geo Coordinates | 51.75130, -1.25200 |
| Part of Walk | Oxford Legends: Hogwarts Cloisters, Alice's River & Inklings Pubs |
| Generated | Generated |
Step through the arched gate into Merton College and look across Mob Quad, widely considered the oldest collegiate quadrangle in Oxford, built between thirteen zero-four and thirteen eleven. Its medieval stone library upstairs has operated continuously since thirteen seventy-eight, complete with chained manuscripts and high leaded dormer windows that feel like a monastery fortress.
Who spent his most prolific scholarly years walking these flagstones? From nineteen forty-five until his retirement in nineteen fifty-nine, Professor J.R.R. Tolkien served as the Merton Professor of English Language and Literature. Here, he spent hours lecturing on Anglo-Saxon and Middle English poetry, including the heroic epic Beowulf.
Tolkien's academic rooms overlooked the quiet garden quadrangle and the ancient city wall. It was while walking these stone cloisters and Merton's rose garden that he finalized and prepared for publication his magnum opus, The Lord of the Rings, which was published in three volumes between nineteen fifty-four and nineteen fifty-five.
In the college fellowship garden grows an ancient mulberry tree planted in the seventeenth century, beside which Tolkien often sat with his pipe, listening to the chime of Christ Church bells and imagining the Ents marching across the valleys of Middle-earth.