Finding the Cottage of Lost Play

[Huinesoron]

Originally Posted by HoME I: The Cottage of Lost Play

Now Eriol was coming from the south and a straight road ran before him bordered at one side with a great wall of grey stone topped with many flowers, or in places overhung with great dark yews. Though them as he climbed the road he could see the first stars shine forth, even as he afterwards sang in the song which he made to that fair city.

Now was he at the summit of the hill amidst its houses, and stepping as if by chance he turned aside down a winding lane, till, a little down the western slope of the hill, his eye was arrested by a tiny dwelling whose many small windows were curtained snugly, yet only so that a most warm and delicious light, as of hearts content within, looked forth.

So the reader is introduced to the Cottage of Lost Play, where Eriol hears the tales of the Elder Days that make up the Book of Lost Tales. What's interesting about the very early Legendarium is that Tol Eressea is England - the whole island eventually comes over and gets invaded by Saxons. A later setting, Tavrobel, can be pinpointed exactly in Great Haywood, a little north of Birmingham. So when Tolkien wrote Kortirion among the Trees about the city of Warwick, he wasn't just drawing an analogy between the two cities: he was saying the city Eriol enters from the south is Warwick.

You see where I'm going with this.

Tolkien gives a fairly precise description of Eriol's entry to Kortirion: he passes through a land of elms, then follows the road from the south described above up to the summit of the hill, then takes a winding road down the western slopes to the cottage. If Tolkien is being as precise as he later was with Tavrobel, can the original Cottage be found on the map?

There are two roads running into Warwick from the south: the Banbury Road in the south-east, and the Stratford Road in the south-west. The Banbury Road is arguably straighter, but more significantly, the steepest part of the road runs right next to a high stone wall, topped with flowers, over which at least one yew-tree can be seen.

It makes sense that Eriol would come from the east - he arrived on Eressea by ship, after all! For bonus points, coming this close against the castle wall means Eriol doesn't get a very good view of Warwick Castle close up - which explains why, at the start of BoLT 1: The Chaining of Melko, he needs a guide to find the approach to the Tower which is modelled on the castle.

Particularly in maps from Tolkien's day (I'm not sure if this is available outside the UK), Castle Hill really does bring you very suddenly into the middle of the houses of Warwick. The hill gets gentler but continues to climb, up along The Butts, and reaches its summit somewhere around the end of Northgate Street. Here Eriol "stepped as if by chance" down a winding lane.

The western road down from the hilltop was the Saltisford road, and is now the A425; it hardly screams "winding lane". Running vaguely north-west, however, is Cape Road - which on the old maps doesn't even have a name, has a big bend in it which qualifies it as "winding", and is flanked by a bank of trees. It's definitely the most lane-like road running from that spot (and the only one that, back then, didn't stay right in urban Warwick).

So where does this lane go? Um... kind of nowhere! On the old maps, it passes a couple of terraces, and then wanders off over the railway towards a prison. Certainly there's no picturesque cottages "a little down the western slope".

On a hunch, I went looking for Edith Bratt's house in Warwick. She was the only reason Tolkien was interested in the city, after all. It took a bit, but I turned up this article which gives her address as 15 Victoria Street. Where is that, exactly?

Well, wouldn't you know it: it's one of those two terraces Cape Road runs past the end of.

Can the Cottage of Lost Play really be an Edwardian terraced house? Well...

Originally Posted by HoME I: The Cottage of Lost Play

...his eye was arrested by a tiny dwelling whose many small windows were curtained snugly, yet only so that a most warm and delicious light, as of hearts content within, looked forth.

Originally Posted by "Carpenter Biography: Reunion

Ronald might address Edith as 'little one' (his favourite name for her', and talk lovingly of her 'little house'...

I think it might be, actually. ^_^

Eriol's entry into Kortirion and arrival at the Cottage of Lost Play, on the 1903 OS map:



hS

[Priya]

Splendid theory! Well done!

Matches well with Letter #181 (from The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, Edited by H. Carpenter, 1981) where after talking about his youth in being brought up in (Sarehole) a semi-rural village in Warwickshire, Tolkien adds:

“I take my models like anyone else - from such ‘life’ as I know.”