Buckland

Buckland is a narrow, thickly inhabited region lying east of the Brandywine River, between the water and the menacing eaves of the Old Forest. It was not part of the original Shire but a colony, founded long ago when Gorhendad Oldbuck, head of the Oldbuck family, crossed the river—the original eastern boundary of the Shire—and established a new home. He built and excavated Brandy Hall, changed his family name to Brandybuck, and became master of what was virtually a small independent country. Over generations, the Brandybucks and their numerous dependants burrowed and built all around, creating the village of Bucklebury and the many dwellings that cluster on the banks and slopes behind the great hall.

Geography and Defenses

The land of Buckland is a thickly settled strip, its chief village being Bucklebury. Unlike most of the Shire, the Bucklanders kept their doors locked after dark, a custom born of their proximity to the Old Forest. Their eastern border was originally unprotected, but they built a great hedge, the High Hay, which had been planted many generations ago and was constantly tended. It ran all the way from the Brandywine Bridge in a big loop curving away from the river to Haysend, where the Withywindle flowed out of the Forest into the Brandywine, a distance of well over twenty miles. This hedge was not a complete protection, for the Forest drew close to it in many places, and the Bucklanders remained wary of the strange and often hostile wood.

The People and Their Character

The Bucklanders were regarded by most folk of the old Shire as peculiar, half-foreigners, though they were not very different from other hobbits except in one notable point: they were fond of boats, and some of them could swim. This was a skill almost unknown in the rest of the Shire. The folk of the Marish, on the west bank of the Brandywine, were friendly with the Bucklanders, and the authority of the Master of the Hall (the head of the Brandybuck family) was still acknowledged by the farmers between Stock and Rushey. The Bucklanders had a strong strain of Stoor blood, which showed in their larger, heavier build and in the fact that many grew beards, a trait absent in Harfoots and Fallohides. They also had many peculiar names and strange words not found elsewhere in the Shire.

Role in the War of the Ring

Buckland became a crucial point of departure for the hobbits' quest. Frodo Baggins, after selling Bag End, pretended to move to a small house at Crickhollow in Buckland, a plan that allowed him to leave the Shire secretly. The house was a decoy, and the real departure was made through a private entrance into the Old Forest, a tunnel under the High Hay. The region was not left untouched by the war. On the night the hobbits fled, Black Riders attacked the house at Crickhollow, and Fatty Bolger, who had stayed behind, raised the alarm. The Horn-call of Buckland, not sounded for a hundred years, was blown, and the Brandybucks roused the countryside. The Riders fled, but the attack marked the beginning of the Shire's direct involvement in the great conflict. Later, when the hobbits returned to find the Shire under the control of Saruman and his ruffians, they found the Brandywine Bridge barred by a new gate and a guardhouse, a sign of the oppression that had spread even to Buckland's borders. The region was eventually liberated along with the rest of the Shire in the Scouring.