Great Smials
The Great Smials was the ancestral home and many-tunnelled mansion of the Took Family.[1] It was located in the town of Tuckborough[2] in the Westfarthing of the Shire.
History
Excavation of the Great Smials was began in T.A. 2683 by Thain Isengrim Took II.[3] It was said that Gerontius Took lived in the old room in the Great Place of the Tooks for year after year, with both he and the room becoming older and shabbier together (and the room remained unchanged for a century after his death).[2]
On the night before the Battle of Bywater, Peregrin Took rode to the Great Smials to raise an army of Tooks for the fight. In the morning he brought back from Tuckborough and the surrounding Green Hills a hundred Hobbits before the Ruffians arrived.[4]
By the end of the first century of the Fourth Age the Great Smials held one of the largest repositories of historical books and records in the Shire. In the library, Peregrin Took and his successors collected many manuscripts written by scribes of Gondor. Here could be found histories and legends related to Elendil and his heirs, and only here were extensive materials about the history of Númenor and the arising of Sauron. The Tale of Years was probably assembled here.[5]
References
- ↑ J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings, "Prologue", "Concerning Hobbits"
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings, The Two Towers, "Treebeard"
- ↑ J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings, Appendix B, "The Third Age"
- ↑ J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings, The Return of the King, "The Scouring of the Shire"
- ↑ J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings, "Prologue", "Note on the Shire Records"
