Following on from their immersive Middle-earth experience created in Kentucky last year, our good friends at Burgschneider have given us the opportunity to break this exciting news: the Brandywine Festival will come to the UK this Autumn!
Burgschneider’s LARP events are known for their incredible attention to detail, allowing attendees to get as close as possible to spending a long weekend living in the Shire. (You can read how much TORn staffer Kili aka Happy Hobbit enjoyed attending, here.) And where better to place the Shire than the very land of Shires, England? Here’s what the official press release tells us:
Concept art for the festival
Bringing The Shire Home: Burgschneider Announces The Brandywine Festival’s UK Debut at Weston Park in 2026
FRANKFURT AM MAIN – Coming to the doorstep of Tolkien’s childhood home, The Brandywine Festival is officially arriving in the United Kingdom. Following a successful U.S. debut, Burgschneider, in collaboration with Middle-earth Enterprises, is excited to bring The Shire to life once more at Staffordshire’s Weston Park in September 2026.
The expansion follows the success of the first annual Brandywine Festival in October 2025. Held in Harrodsburg, Kentucky, the 5-day, 4-night Live Action Roleplaying (LARP) event drew fans from across the country. Now, the festival will be within an hour’s drive of Birmingham, J.R.R. Tolkien’s childhood home and the very landscapes that inspired its setting.
“We are incredibly honored to bring The Brandywine Festival back to the land where the story took flight,” said Markus Böhm, CEO of Burgschneider. “After the success in Kentucky, it felt only right to bring this experience home. At Weston Park, we are stepping into a landscape that echoes the very soul of Tolkien’s work.”
An Historic Setting
Temple Wood at Weston Park
Weston Park is a 17th-century estate featuring 1,000 acres of rolling parkland. Known for hosting world-class events, the Weston Park team has shown great enthusiasm for the project, providing an authentic backdrop for fans to live out their own Hobbit-themed adventures. Guests will be fully immersed in the experience.
Weston Park is a stately home and estate on the Shropshire/Staffordshire border. Owned by the Weston Park Foundation, an independent charitable trust, the estate is dedicated to preserving its 17th-century heritage and world-class art collection for the public. A premier venue for large-scale events, Weston Park balances historic grandeur with a commitment to ethical and sustainable tourism.
If spending time in the English countryside, eating, drinking and being the Hobbit of your choice sounds like a dream come true, then stay tuned – we’ll bring you news of when tickets will be going on sale, very soon.
About Burgschneider
Burgschneider is a leading designer and manufacturer of medieval and fantasy costumes, known for its dedication to authenticity, craftsmanship, and storytelling. As the organizer of ConQuest of Mythodea—the world’s largest live action roleplaying (LARP) event—Burgschneider brings extensive expertise in creating and coordinating immersive experiences. From historical reenactments to large-scale LARP events, Burgschneider costumes empower enthusiasts to fully step into their favorite historical and fictional worlds.
About Middle-earth Enterprises
Middle-earth Enterprises owns exclusive worldwide rights to motion picture, merchandise, live stage and services inspired by The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit books, by J.R.R. Tolkien. We have produced and licensed goods based upon these four books, for a half century. Inspired by our deep appreciation for the fictional world created by Professor Tolkien, we are dedicated to working with those developing highest quality creations inspired by the lore, in accordance with state-of-the-art green business and sustainability practices; including fair trade, equality in the workplace, and a deep commitment to protect our Earth, its wondrous beauty, and the viability of every living creature. As Middle-earth’s stewards and custodians, our goal is to consistently deliver a wealth of great content in both new and known formats; to ensure Middle-earth’s rightful place as the world’s leading fantasy IP & brand, forever. Visit us at www.middleearth.com for details.
The Amazon description reads: As Christopher Tolkien notes in his Introduction, The Bovadium Fragments was a “satirical fantasy” written by his father, which grew out of a planning controversy that erupted in Oxford in the late 1940s, when J.R.R. Tolkien was the Merton Professor of English Language and Literature.
JRR Tolkien vs the Automobile
Written initially for his own amusement, Tolkien’s tale was a private academic jest that poked gentle fun at the pomposity of archaeologists and the hideousness of college crockery. However, it was at the same time expressing a barbed cri de coeur against the inexorable rise of motor transport that was overwhelming the tranquility of his beloved city. Interest in publishing it in the 1960s ultimately foundered, and the text remained hidden for 60 years.
Anyone who has read Tolkien’s letters will know that he is at his funniest when filled with rage, and The Bovadium Fragments is a work brimming with Tolkien’s fury — specifically, ire over mankind’s obsession with motor vehicles. Tolkien’s anger is expressed through a playful satire told from the perspective of a group of future archaeologists who are studying the titular fragments, which tell of a civilization that asphyxiated itself on its own exhaust fumes. Tolkien’s fictional fragments use the language of ancient myth, reframing modern issues like traffic congestion and parking with a grandeur that highlights their total absurdity. It is Tolkien at his angriest and funniest, making The Bovadium Fragments a minor treasure in his ever-growing catalog.
“the spirit of ‘Isengard,’ if not of Mordor, is of course always cropping up. The present design of destroying Oxford in order to accommodate motor-cars is a case.” Readers of The Lord of the Rings (1954-55) will recognize the allusion. In the author’s magnum opus, Isengard is a kind of industrial hell, endlessly feeding its furnaces with felled trees… The Bovadium Fragments brings Tolkien’s visceral hatred of such machines to the fore for the first time — on the same level as Isengard or the scoured Shire. In Tolkien’s story, the words “Motores” and “monsters” are interchangeable. And with his grand, mythic register, Tolkien defamiliarizes the car enough for modern readers to see it as he does — as truly monstrous. “[T]he Motores continued to bring forth an ever larger progeny,” Tolkien writes. “[M]any of the citizens harboured the monsters, feeding them with the costly oils and essences which they required, and building houses for them in their gardens….”
