Hobbiton Movie Set, New Zealand
In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.
The Hobbit, J.R.R. Tolkien
So goes the famous first line of JRR Tolkien’s The Hobbit, the prequel to his famous Lord of the Rings trilogy that has touched so many of our lives.
On the seventh day of our December 2017 honeymoon, Matt and I woke up after a pretty restless night at our Rotorua hotel (super old hotel = super thin walls) and drove an hour north to Matamata. If you look on a map of New Zealand, Matamata rests in farming country, with green, rolling hills that are slightly reminiscent of our home state of Tennessee. Before director Peter Jackson brought The Lord of the Rings to the big screen, Matamata was virtually unknown, apart from its horse racing, sheep shearing, and dairy production. Now, however, it boasts one of New Zealand’s most important tourist attractions, and one of the #1 reasons why Matt and I chose to visit New Zealand: the Hobbiton Movie Set, where Lord of the Rings was filmed.
I won’t go into details explaining Hobbiton or its draw for those of you unfortunate enough to have missed out on JRR Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings novels. I will tell you, however, that reading and watching LOTR was one of the most important and vivid experiences of my childhood. It is a true good-versus-evil story filled with beautiful examples of bravery, kindness, friendship, and loyalty.
In 1998, when Peter Jackson sent his location scouts to New Zealand to find filming locations depicting The Shire, they returned with the Alexander’s farm in Matamata. Peter Jackson convinced the Alexander Family to let him build Hobbiton on part of their farm, and likewise convinced the governor of New Zealand to let him deploy the NZ Army to build working roads in and out of The Shire to help with production. The final result, many years later: a real working hobbit farm, complete with 39 hobbit holes, vegetable gardens, orchards, two lakes, hundreds of trees, a tavern, and a massive tourism industry welcoming 2,000 people/day.
Matt and I arrived early for our 11am tour of Hobbiton and spent about an hour exploring the gift shop and meeting other tourists from various parts of the world. The Alexander farm, as you can imagine, is closed to the public, so the only access to Hobbiton is via an official tour bus. After the bus dropped us off in The Shire, our tour guide announced that we would first pass through the location in the movie where we first meet Frodo (LOTR fans: we walked right through the pass where Gandalf drives his wagon down the road and Frodo jumps in and rides with him).
After that, the tour stretched along for a blissful two hours, as we bee-bopped from hobbit hole to hobbit hole, getting to step inside one of the holes and take thousands of pictures of every minute detail.
We learned some pretty interesting facts along the way. If you’ve seen the movie, you know that hobbits are about 3ft tall; however, the actors playing the hobbits were much taller than this. To make the actors seem hobbit-sized, Peter Jackson created several miniature versions of the hobbit holes, so when characters such as Gandalf stand next to them, they seem huge in comparison. Peter Jackson even went so far as to plant miniature versions of trees next to and around these holes to create the effect. We learned a lot about his attention to detail—he had an eagle flown in to fly around Hobbiton and scare away the native New Zealand birds, since Hobbiton is supposed to be set in the English countryside.
We also found out that the reason Ian Holm (Bilbo) gives such an interesting birthday speech is because he ad-libbed it, and the reactions of his fellow hobbits aren’t exactly what you think: they’re not reacting to his speech, but rather to the fact that the birthday cake prop had caught on fire behind him. If you watch the film, our guide said, you should be able to see smoke pouring out from behind his back.
Our tour ended with a few complimentary beers at The Green Dragon Inn, as well as a hobbit feast with our fellow travelers. Matt and I really enjoyed this buffet lunch because our company was so good—we made friends with another American couple, as well as a native New Zealand gentleman who was so happy to give us lots of tips and tricks about our adventures.
Hobbiton was an incredibly special time, and as much as I’d love to keep writing about it, the pictures say everything for me. Even if you’re not a fan of LOTR, and even if you’ve never seen the movies, it’s easy to appreciate the charm and beauty of the Hobbiton movie set.
