Wednesday 14 April 2010

The Inspiration Behind Tolkien's Gates of Moria

I received a comment from a reader pointing out that the tree trunks at St Edward's looked more like the Gates of Moria instead of the Gates of Mordor.

When I compared Tolkien's drawings of the Gates of Moria with the tree trunks, it looked like she was right.

Well, maybe the tour guide made a mistake or I heard wrongly. Anyway, here's an updated version of the entry. Sorry for the mistake, folks!

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Do you want to know what inspired JRR Tolkien's Gates of Mordor Moria in the Lord of the Rings trilogy?

Apparently Tolkien conceived the idea for those famous gates from a pair of tree trunks in the Church of St Edward in Stow-on-the-Wold.

Church of St Edward


Stow-on-the-Wold is a little town situated in the Cotswolds, a range of hills in west-central England famous for its gentle hillsides, sleepy villages and for being so 'typically English'.

Wanna see how the tree trunks look like? Scroll downwards ...


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Here they are ... the trees that inspired Tolkien's Gates of Mordor Moria


And here is an artist impression a drawing by Tolkien himself of the gates:


Similar, right?


3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Interesting!
Are you sure you don't mean the gates of _Moria_ though? That gate has trees on either side of it and is strikingly similar to the one in your picture, both by description and Tolkien's own drawings.
http://images.google.se/images?hl=sv&q=gates%20of%20moria&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&tab=wi

Julie Lim said...

You've got a point there. I remember the guide telling us it's Mordor. But maybe he made a mistake or I heard wrongly. Anyway, I'll make the changes :-)

JBBR said...

Very interesting article and beautiful photographs. Nice work all! This has inspired me to create a wooden cut out of the drawing to cover my classroom door.

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