Tolkien Trail - Gypsy Green/Brocton Camp Walk

‌‌‌‌‌‌‌‌‌‌Distance: over 30 miles | Start: Coppice Hill / Penkridge Library | Grid Ref: SJ 771 441 / SJ 925 141

The Staffordshire Tolkien Trail is a series of three linked walks that cover over 30 miles of the Staffordshire Countryside on and around Cannock Chase. The walks focus on Staffordshire’s J.R.R. Tolkien connection, but also offer lots of other local history interest, great Staffordshire views and are a fantastic way to stay healthy and enjoy Staffordshire’s cultural and rural environment.

Download route guide (2.26 MB)

Useful information

• There are 3 suggested walks: The Cannock Chase walk 12 miles, Great Haywood walk 10 miles, and Gypsy Green / Brocton camp walk 12 miles.
• The walks are flexible – you may walk in stages or drive to locations of interest. Look out for led walks or walk with friends.
• In addition to directions for the walks, this page also provides information about J.R.R. Tolkien in Staffordshire.

Gypsy Green / Brocton camp walk

A circular walk departing from Penkridge Library follows the Staffordshire and Worcestershire Canal and the Staffordshire Way to Gypsy Green, on to Bednall and then to Brocton via footpaths. From Brocton the walk heads up on to Cannock Chase and the site of Brocton Camp. The walk then heads back down to Bednall and on to Acton Trussell following footpaths, returning to Penkridge via the canal towpath.

Penkridge Library is situated at Bell Brook; there are lots of free parking at the nearby Haling Dene Centre.

Directions

1. From Penkridge Library walk up Cannock Road, pass The Haling Dene Centre and turn left down onto the canal towpath at The Boat public house.
2. Follow the towpath to Parkgate Lock. From here follow the Staffordshire Way over Teddesley Park, enjoying fine views of Staffordshire and Shropshire, until reaching Gypsy Green where Tolkien’s cottage of 1918 can be seen.
3. Follow Cock Lane into Bednall passing the school and C19th Church.
4. Cross Common Lane and follow the well signposted footpath to Brocton, emerging on the A34. Cross carefully here and continue to follow the footpath, taking a right turn in front of a playing area after the stables. Follow this footpath up onto Tar Hill, briefly crossing Oldacre Lane on route.
5. Follow the main footpath around Tar Hill, eventually crossing Chase Road. Proceed towards Coppice Hill car park, but turn right to view the site of the Messines Model, then down a green path, following signs for Freda’s Grave.
   
   A little further on, amidst the ruins of Brocton Camp is Freda’s Grave, a monument to the mascot of the New Zealand Rifles, a harlequin Great Dane who died in 1918.
6. Follow the Heart of England Way and Staffordshire Way South to the Glacial Boulder, site of the water tower which served the camp during the War.
7. From here follow The Staffordshire Way down Sycamore Hill, crossing Camp Road and the busy A34 back to Bednall.
8. At the end of Richfield Lane, cross Common Road and walk up Smithy Lane to a footpath. Follow this footpath, crossing Cock Lane, across fields to Teddesley Road.
9. After a brief walk down this quite busy road turn right down Meadow Lane and walk into Acton Trussell. Bear left onto Barnfield Road, cross Penkridge Road into Moathouse Close, pass The Moat House and look to the left for a footpath which crosses the canal.
10. Follow the towpath all the way back to Penkridge Library where you can explore the J.R.R. Tolkien Collection.

J.R.R. Tolkien in Staffordshire

John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, the world famous author of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, spent an important period of his early life in Staffordshire, in particular during the Great War when posted to the Army training camps on Cannock Chase. In 1914 Lord Lichfield had given permission for two large training and transit camps to be constructed on Cannock Chase. The camps at Rugeley and Brocton were able to accommodate around 40,000 men and it is estimated that around half a million soldiers passed through the camps during the war. Cannock Chase became a new town of serried ranks of huts, occupied by officers and men of the British Army for the duration; there were also shops, a hospital, a power station and water tower serving plumbing for the camps and a cross Chase railway, known as the Tackeroo. In addition training grounds, practice trenches, drill squares and rifle and grenade ranges were constructed to prepare soldiers for the front line in France and beyond.

The Great War years were a formative period in the development of Tolkien’s work on the mythology, languages, history and geography of what would become Middle- earth (his Legendarium) and references in some of his writings relate to Staffordshire – Great Haywood, Shugborough Hall, Gypsy Green near Penkridge and Cannock Chase – as well as to other places further afield such as Warwick, the Holderness Peninsula, Oxford and Cheltenham. Influences can be traced in his creative work, in particular his contemporary poetry and also The Book of Lost Tales, which was a forerunner to The Silmarillion.

From the spring of 1916 Tolkien stayed in Great Haywood with his wife, Edith. Great Haywood, with is confluence of the Rivers Sow and Trent at Essex Bridge, became Tavrobel where the Rivers Gruir and Afros of Middle-earth met, near the ‘House of a Hundred Chimneys’ which is believed to refer to Shugborough Hall. The delightful little Essex Bridge became The Grey Bridge of Tavrobel in a ballad written during his stay.

Tolkien served as an officer in the Lancashire Fusiliers and was posted to France in June 1916 and served at The Battle of the Somme, returning to Great Haywood later that year to recuperate from trench fever. Here he began work on what would become The Book of Lost Tales, in particular The Cottage of Lost Play and The Fall of Gondolin. After his extended period of convalescent leave in Great Haywood, Tolkien was posted away on 27th February 1917 to a hospital in Harrogate, Yorkshire. Edith would follow him and the couple would not return to Staffordshire for more than a year.

In 1918 Tolkien was posted back to Cannock Chase and with his wife, and new-born son John, moved briefly to Penkridge. They rented a cottage at Gypsy Green on the Teddesley Park Estate, which later featured as Fladweth Amrod, or Nomad’s Green, in his writings for The Book of Lost Tales. He regularly cycled or walked from the camp at Brocton down to the cottage at Gypsy Green to see Edith and his baby son. He made several notable illustrations during his brief time there, one of the cottage that still stands and another, ‘High Life at Gipsy Green’ detailing life at the cottage and in camp, before being sent to hospital in Hull following an unpleasant attack of gastritis in late June. Edith, exhausted by so many moves and her recent pregnancy, remained at Gypsy Green until the war ended when she joined him in Oxford where he had found employment working on the Oxford English Dictionary.

Tolkien’s Great Haywood 1916 – 1917

Between November 1915 and June 1916 J.R.R. Tolkien was stationed at Rugeley and Brocton Military Camps on Cannock Chase. After his marriage to Edith Bratt in March 1916, the couple came to Great Haywood to look for accommodation for Edith. It was quite common for officers to find lodgings for their wives near their camps and the Tolkiens probably chose Great Haywood because it was quite close to Brocton Camp and also had a Catholic church, St. John the Baptist.

On their first visit they probably stayed at the Clifford Arms while they looked for lodgings. They met the local parish priest, Father Augustin Emery, who offered temporary accommodation at St. John’s Presbytery to Edith and her cousin Jennie Grove, who was to accompany her during her stay. Father Emery was to become a personal friend (‘Uncle Gus’) of the Tolkiens and they were to enjoy several musical evenings together at the Presbytery. Edith was a fine pianist while Emery played the violin.

From the Presbytery, Edith and Jennie moved to some furnished rooms at the home of a Mr. and Mrs. Kendrick, at Hazeldene House, where they were visited on the weekend of 27th-28th May by Ronald’s close friend from schooldays, Geoffrey Bache Smith, who described it as a ‘splendid two days’. While Ronald was away in France Edith rented a cottage in which she and Ronald could live together on his return. This was most probably what is now called Rock Cottage, close to the village Reading Room and Library. After Ronald’s return from France, the couple were reunited on 9th December 1916 and lived together in the cottage for almost three months while Ronald recovered from his experiences in the trenches and a serious bout of trench fever.

Edith and Ronald did their best to put the war and the cold winter out of their minds and to make the most of their short time together here. During the day, wrapped up against the cold, they went on long walks in the village and along the Trent and the canals, and close to Shugborough Hall. In the evenings they made log fires in their cottage, where Edith played the piano while Ronald read poetry, sketched and wrote. It was in this cottage that Ronald was able for the first time since he left university to concentrate his mind on writing the mythological stories that were, in time, to evolve into The Lord of the Rings.

His most important writings here were The Fall of Gondolin, which was very much influenced by his experiences on the Somme battlefield, and The Cottage of Lost Play, the foundational story for all his later writings. Both stories were later published as parts of his Book of Lost Tales. The Tolkiens finally left Great Haywood on 27th February 1917, when a still poorly Ronald was transferred to a hospital in Harrogate, Yorkshire. They would not return to Staffordshire until 1918.