The Shire is an inland area settled exclusively by hobbits, the Shire-folk, largely sheltered from the goings-on in the rest of Middle-earth.

At the end of The Hobbit, Bilbo returns to the Shire, only to find out that he has been declared "missing and presumed dead" and that his hobbit-hole and all its contents are up for auction.

Tolkien based the Shire's landscapes, climate, flora, fauna, and placenames on Worcestershire and Warwickshire, the rural counties in England where he lived.

In Peter Jackson's films of both The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, the Shire was represented by countryside and constructed hobbit-holes on a farm near Matamata in New Zealand, which became a tourist destination.

Little of his carefully crafted[1] fictional geography, history, calendar, and constitution appeared in The Hobbit or The Lord of the Rings, though additional details were given in the Appendices of later editions.

The main and oldest part of the Shire was bordered to the east by the Brandywine River, on the north by uplands rising to the Hills of Evendim, on the west by the Far Downs, and on the south by marshland.

It was served by an inn named The Prancing Pony,[T 9] noted for its fine beer which was sampled by hobbits, men, and the wizard Gandalf.

[T 11][12] Tolkien suggested two different origins for the people of Bree: either it had been founded and populated by men of the Edain who did not reach Beleriand in the First Age, remaining east of the mountains in Eriador; or they came from the same stock as the Dunlendings.

The hobbits from the vale of Anduin had migrated west over the perilous Misty Mountains, living in the wilds of Eriador before moving to the Shire.

After the fall of Arnor, the Shire remained a self-governing realm; the Shire-folk chose a Thain to hold the king's powers.

Generally the only strangers entering the Shire were Dwarves travelling on the Great Road from their mines in the Blue Mountains, and occasional Elves on their way to the Grey Havens.

The protagonists of The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings, Bilbo and Frodo Baggins, lived at Bag End,[d] a luxurious smial or hobbit-burrow, dug into The Hill on the north side of the town of Hobbiton in the Westfarthing.

[T 10] While Frodo, Sam, Merry, and Pippin were away on the quest to destroy the Ring, the Shire was taken over by Saruman through his underling Lotho Sackville-Baggins.

They ran the Shire in a parody of a modern state, complete with armed ruffians, destruction of trees and handsome old buildings, and ugly industrialisation.

Tolkien however rendered their language as modern English in The Hobbit and in Lord of the Rings, just as he had used Old Norse names for the Dwarves.

[19] There was a Message Service for post, and the 12 "Shirriffs" (three for each Farthing) of the Watch for police; their chief duties were rounding up stray livestock.

[T 20] The Shire corresponds roughly to the West Midlands region of England in the remote past, extending to Warwickshire and Worcestershire (where Tolkien grew up),[26][27] forming in Shippey's words a "cultural unit with deep roots in history".

[6] Tolkien said that pipe-weed "flourishes only in warm sheltered places like Longbottom;"[T 1] in the seventeenth century, the Evesham area of Worcestershire was well known for its tobacco.

Tolkien made the Shire feel homely and English in a variety of ways, from names such as Bagshot Row[j] and the Mill to country pubs with familiar names such as "The Green Dragon" in Bywater,[k] "The Ivy Bush" near Hobbiton on the Bywater Road,[l] and "The Golden Perch" in Stock, famous for its fine beer.

[27][T 22] The Tolkien family's relocation from Sarehole to Moseley and Kings Heath in 1901, and then again to Edgbaston in 1902, moved them steadily closer to the industry of central Birmingham.

[36] Humphrey Carpenter comments in J. R. R. Tolkien: A Biography that the views of Moseley were a sad contrast to the Warwickshire countryside of his youth.

[37]"To have just at the age when imagination is opening out, suddenly find yourself in a quiet Warwickshire village, I think it engenders a particular love of what you might call central Midlands English countryside.

Because of bad weather, 18 of 37 hobbit-holes could not immediately be bulldozed; before work could restart, they were attracting over 12,000 tourists per year to Ian Alexander's farm, where Hobbiton and Bag End had been situated.

[42] Jackson's Bree is constantly unpleasant and threatening, complete with special effects and the Eye of Sauron when Frodo puts on the Ring.

[43] In Ralph Bakshi's animated 1978 adaptation of The Lord of the Rings, Alan Tilvern voiced Bakshi's Butterbur (as "Innkeeper");[44] David Weatherley played Butterbur in Jackson's epic,[45] while James Grout played him in BBC Radio's 1981 serialization of The Lord of the Rings.

[46] In the 1991 low-budget Russian adaptation of The Fellowship of the Ring, Khraniteli, Butterbur appears as "Lavr Narkiss", played by Nikolay Burov.

[47][48] In Yle's 1993 television miniseries Hobitit, Butterbur ("Viljami Voivalvatti" in Finnish, meaning "Billy Butter") was played by Mikko Kivinen.