<P> In particular, the central part of the Shire corresponds to the West Midlands region of England, extending to Worcestershire (where Tolkien located his "home" in particular, his mother's family being from Evesham), Gloucestershire, Shropshire, Warwickshire, Herefordshire and Staffordshire, as argued by Tom Shippey forming a "cultural unit with deep roots in history". The Northfarthing, with its heavy snowfalls, may correspond to Yorkshire or the Lake District, while the Southfarthing lay far enough south to support the cultivation of wine and tobacco ("pipe - weed"). Tolkien said that pipe - weed "flourishes only in warm sheltered places like Longbottom ." In the seventeenth century, Worcestershire, in particular the area of Evesham, was well known as an area where tobacco was cultivated . </P> <P> The name "Shire" harks back to T.H. White's book England Have My Bones, where White says that he lives in "the Shire" (with a capital "s"). </P> <P> Hooker observes that the Sindarin i drann is a loanword from Welsh, where tran means district, or a region . The Welsh word tran will mutate to dran under certain grammatical conditions, for example: when it is preceded by the Welsh definite article y . </P> <P> The industrialisation of the Shire was based on Tolkien's childhood experience of the blighting of the Worcestershire countryside by the spread of heavy industry . The rebellion of the Hobbits and the restoration of the pre-industrial Shire may be interpreted as a prescription of voluntary simplicity as a remedy to the problems of modern society . Saruman, the character responsible for the pollution of the Shire, derives his name partly from Sarehole Mill, in the vicinity of which Tolkien spent "the most idyllic period" of his childhood . The Shire is imagined as the West Midlands in a more remote past, akin to the Old English kingdom of Mercia, aspects of which serve also as a model for the Mark of the Rohirrim . </P>

Map of the shire lord of the rings