Five-day Brandywine Festival lands at Weston Park this September, drawing fans from across the country to estate said to have inspired Middle-earth
Weston Park in Shropshire is to host the UK’s first official hobbit festival this September.
The event aims to bring to life J.R.R. Tolkien’s fictional Shire to life in countryside said to have inspired it.
The five-day Brandywine Festival will use the estate’s 1,000 acres of Capability Brown parkland to welcome fans from across the country. The venue sits close to Tolkien’s childhood home in Birmingham and near The Wrekin hill, whose views are widely believed to have shaped his vision of Middle-earth, the setting for The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings.
Rebecca Alexander, head of estate operations at Weston Park, said she was thrilled the venue had been chosen for the event’s UK debut. “The festival itself encourages people to leave behind the modern world in exchange for a simple, slow-paced hobbit existence,” she said.
Workshops and folk games
Visitors can take part in workshops covering hobbit dancing, cooking, weaving and fibre arts, alongside music and dance. At the heart of the festival are the Four Farthing Games, a series of traditional hobbit folk contests.
Kyle Pedley, a Middle-earth superfan from Stourbridge who once won a global competition to tour the Lord of the Rings film sets in New Zealand with director Peter Jackson, said the announcement was “the stuff of dreams”. He added that spending five days immersed in hobbit life in a landscape linked to Tolkien’s inspiration felt “magical”.
The festival was launched last year in Harrodsburg, Kentucky, by organisers Burgschneider alongside Middle-earth Enterprises, which holds worldwide rights to Tolkien’s work for film, stage and merchandise.
Burgschneider chief executive Markus Böhm said it felt “only right” to bring the experience home after its success in America, adding that Weston Park offered a landscape that “echoes the very soul of Tolkien’s work”.
The Brandywine Festival runs from 9 to 13 September. More details are available at weston-park.com.
