Lucy writes: Whilst browsing the Bonhams auctioneers online catalogues I noticed an old document for sale marked “Tolkien and Birmingham – Sarehole Mill” looks to be an old indenture for Tolkien’s Mill. It is lot 625 in an auction on 27 March 2007 at Bonhams’ New Bond Street salerooms in London of “The Library of the late Paul Betts and other properties including manuscripts”.
From the website: Sarehole Mill occupies a central place in the story of J.R.R. Tolkien, as John Ezard, then writing for the Oxford Mail, discovered: “Seven years before his death Tolkien told me about Sarehole, his imaginative heartland, a small village near Birmingham which was the starting-point for his fictional Shire in both The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings. [bonhams.com]
