4 Hobbit Houses Bring Charm into the Landscape

Aug - 06
2019

4 Hobbit Houses Bring Charm into the Landscape

You don’t have to be a fan of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings or The Hobbit to Love the charm of a hobbit house. As we gear up for the film release of The Hobbit: An Unusual Journey on December 13, take a look at a few architectural homages to Bilbo Baggins’ cherished home.

Simon Dale

Location: Wales
Size: 538 square feet

Simon Dale constructed his low-impact house’s timber frame with the support of his father-in-law, a builder. The topmost turf and mud layer ensures the house blends with its surroundings as it might’ shire. A sheet waterproofs the roof’s insulating layer of straw bales.

Although the house looks like it was taken out of one of Peter Jackson’s New Zealand places, Dale and his family built the house as an expression of their design ethos. Fed up with paying a hefty monthly mortgage, he states that building his home out of natural materials — and for under3,000 (about $5,000) — entirely did away with contractors’ profits and the “cocktail of carcinogenic toxins that satisfy many contemporary buildings,” as he puts it.

Simon Dale

On his site, Dale notes that being his own architect let him produce a design that is an organic extension of himself as opposed to some mass-produced box.

Simon Dale

A wood burner casts a soft glow — inspired home and heats the house. Lime plaster walls and timber frames and roofing materials taken out of the surrounding region give the house a rustic, woodland personality.

Archer & Buchanan Architecture, Ltd..

Location: Chester County, Pennsylvania
Size: 600 square feet

This Pennsylvania collector and homeowner of Tolkien artifacts and books worked closely with architect Peter Archer throughout the design and build of the hobbit-inspired cottage. Archer and his crew constructed the house to look as if it had risen from the rock wall.

Archer & Buchanan Architecture, Ltd..

A detail taken straight out of Tolkien’s text, the signature round hobbit door, is custom made from cedar.

Archer & Buchanan Architecture, Ltd..

Timber arches frame the library, a contemplative place where the proprietor reads and research Tolkien manuscripts and publications.

Tour the rest of the private retreat on

Location: Trout Creek, Montana
Size: 1,000 square feet

What began as a below-ground vacation home for owner Steve Michaels’ family evolved to the Hobbit House of Montana, where Tolkien fans can delight in the whimsical setting. The Montana “shire” has many hobbit-house-like facades, a tree-stump-shaped troll house and little fairy houses.

Colorful murals and tradition shire accents welcomes guests in the entrance to the troll house.

The hobbit house’s main bedroom has a king-size bed, a high profile TV, satellite radio and Wi-Fi. Michaels says you may even slide into slippers that look like hobbits’ feet or wear a handmade wizard’s hat much like the one Gandalf wears in the film.

Wildflower Turf

Location: Dartford, Kent, England
Size: 183 square feet

This hobbit-inspired playhouse has a signature circular door which opens for homeowner Melani Levin’s children.

Wildflower Turf

Turf covers the playhouse roof, which flowers throughout the seasons with native wildflowers. The inviting facade is a reflection of Tolkien’s very first few lines of The Hobbit: “In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell … it was a hobbit-hole, which means comfort.”

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