Timeline Saturday 15 February 1896

Events on Saturday 15 February 1896 1

• 1896 Father dies — family settles in Sarehole Arthur Tolkien dies in Bloemfontein on 15 February 1896. Mabel Tolkien, now a widow with two small boys and limited income, settles in Sarehole — then a rural village south of Birmingham — where Ronald spends four formative years. Sarehole's mill, fields, hedgerows and local characters (including a farmer the boys nickname 'The Black Ogre') leave deep impressions on Tolkien's imagination. He later identifies Sarehole as the primary landscape of the Shire. The rural English idyll he discovers there — and its loss as Birmingham's suburbs swallow the village — haunts his work.