Buckland

The land between river and forest

Buckland is a narrow, thickly settled country on the eastern side of the Brandywine, outside the Shire proper but inhabited entirely by hobbits. Its western edge is the river, crossed by the Bucklebury Ferry and, further north, by the Brandywine Bridge on the Great East Road. Its eastern boundary is the High Hay, a great hedge more than twenty miles long planted by the Bucklanders to keep out the trees of the Old Forest. In the south the land runs down to the marshes where the Withywindle joins the river.

The chief settlement is Bucklebury, and the chief house is Brandy Hall, a vast warren dug into Buck Hill by the founder of the country and enlarged by every generation since until it held hundreds of Brandybucks and their dependants. To the north-east lay Crickhollow, the small house that Frodo bought as a blind when he pretended to be moving out of Hobbiton.

The Bucklanders

Buckland was founded by hobbits of Stoorish blood, and its people retained a Stoor's ease with rivers and boats that the rest of the Shire found alarming. They also kept a wary eye on the Forest and the Barrow-downs beyond, locking their doors after dark and maintaining a horn-call to rouse the country in an emergency. The Master of Buckland, known as the Master of the Hall, was in effect the lord of the district; Merry Brandybuck became Master in Fo.A. 11 after his father Saradoc.

Gorhendad Oldbuck of the Marish crossed the Brandywine around T.A. 2340, changed his family's name to Brandybuck, and began the digging of Brandy Hall. His descendants planted the High Hay and made the country between the river and the Forest into the most populous corner of hobbit-land east of the water. In the Fell Winter of 2911 the frozen river gave the wolves of Eriador a way in, and Buckland suffered.

Buckland's part in the War of the Ring was brief but eventful. Frodo, Sam and Pippin crossed by the Ferry on September 25, 3018, with a Black Rider watching from the far bank, and spent one night at Crickhollow before Merry led them through the gate in the High Hay into the Old Forest. Four nights later the Nazgûl broke into Crickhollow, found it empty, and were driven off when Fredegar Bolger raised the Horn-call of Buckland. The Bucklanders held the Bridge against Lotho's ruffians through the following year, and when the travellers returned Merry sounded the same horn to raise the Shire.

In the Fourth Age Buckland was formally attached to the Shire as the Eastmarch, balancing the new Westmarch beyond the Far Downs.

A long strip of settled country between the Brandywine and the High Hay, east of the Shire; Bucklebury and Brandy Hall stand near its middle, Crickhollow to the north-east, the Withywindle marshes to the south.