Sarehole Mill
Sarehole Mill, in its current form, dates from 1771. Previously, another mill dating to 1542 called Biddle’s Mill stood on the site. In 1756, early industrialist Matthew Boulton leased the mill and partially converted its machinery for metal flattening for button production. In 1852, a single-cylinder steam engine was added to the mill to ensure consistent operation, and its distinctive chimney was added. In 1919, the mill was shut down and fell into disrepair, until being restored in 1969.
Today it is an operation branch of the Birmingham Museums Trust. The mill has two waterwheels, one of which is operational and is still used to grind wheat into flour. The original steam engine was removed and replaced, though the replacement is currently non-functioning.
Tolkien lived across the way from the mill in his childhood and has stated that the mill and surrounding countryside were very influential in his imaginings of Middle-earth. A very similar mill is depicted in Tolkien’s illustration, Hobbiton from Across the Water.
Sarehole Mill, a Reflection
When visiting Sarehole Mill, one visits a microcosm. It is a preserved piece of British countryside that bears a striking resemblance to Tolkien’s description of Westfarthing in the Shire country in his works. The geography bears a strong resemblance as well. Upon crossing the River Cole, you pass an inn (or the former site of one in present day), walk up the lane past the mill, cut over a little way and you arrive at Tolkien’s childhood home. Follow these same directions in the Shire and you will come to Bag End. The mill and its surrounding areas are a vestige of the early-20th-century rural village community that has slowly been encroached upon by the city of Birmingham. Tolkien held worthwhile trepidation about the area’s increased development, worrying that the places he loved could be callously destroyed to make way for townhouses. Thankfully, however, many suburbanites wanted to preserve this small world-apart just as Tolkien did, so it is still there, preserved as it was in Tolkien’s time, for the enjoyment of the many who visit.
Tolkien's worries of feckless destruction of the environment had a poignant basis, too. In Carpenter's biography, Tolkien was quoted as saying, "There was a willow hanging over the mill-pool (at Sarehole) and I learned to climb it. It belonged to a butcher on the Stratford Road, I think. One day they cut it down. They didn't do anything with it: the log just lay there, I never forgot that." It is suggested by many that this incident may have been the inspiration for the episode in Return of the King, The Scouring of the Shire when the hobbits have made it home to the Shire and discover that the Party Tree had been cut down and left in the middle of the field, unused. Sam's horror and distress is perhaps similar to that of a young Tolkien who happened upon one of his favorite climbing trees prostrate and mangled. Also, in The Scouring of the Shire, the old mill had been replaced with a great smoke belching mill with towering chimney, that polluted the surrounding greenery and harmed a once-beautiful place in the name of progress. One might wonder if this was a terrifying vision of what Sarehole may have become in the height of the industrial age.
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