Fellowship of stars battles to save Tolkien’s real Bag End

British actor Ian McKellen in London on October 28, 2019 (Photo by ISABEL INFANTES / AFP)

LONDON – Gandalf, Bilbo Baggins and other celebrities have formed a new crowdfunding grant to raise $ 6 million to buy the Oxford home of “Lord of the Rings” author JRR Tolkien.

Actors Ian McKellen and Martin Freeman, stars of Peter Jackson’s Oscar-winning film adaptations, have joined the “Project Northmoor” campaign to turn the sprawling house into a museum honoring the fantasy writer.

“Raising $ 6 million (£ 4.5 million) in three months is a huge challenge,” British novelist Julia Golding, who runs the campaign, said in a statement.

“However, we just have to look at Frodo and Sam’s journey from Rivendell to Mount Doom, which took the same amount of time, and we are inspired that we can do this too!”

With seven bedrooms and a spacious garden, 20 Northmoor Road in Oxford is a long way from the modest hobbit dwelling in Bag End inhabited by the Baggins clan.

Tolkien and his family moved into the house in 1930 and lived there for 17 years while he was a professor of Anglo-Saxon at Oxford University.

There he wrote “The Hobbit” and most of the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy.

Despite its worldwide fame, there is currently no literary center dedicated to Tolkien, not in Britain or anywhere else. The campaign aims to buy the house from its current owner, renovate it and create a museum.

“We cannot accomplish this without the support of the worldwide Tolkien fan community, our community of backers,” said McKellen, soliciting donations at www.projectnorthmoor.org until March 15 of next year.

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