The Hobbit Dome

A Fantastic Hole in the Ground

In the 1930s when J.R.R. Tolkien began creating his critically and financially successful fantasy novel The Hobbit, he described hobbits as creatures similar to humans but very small in size and with hairy feet. He called them “hole-dwellers” who lived in the “lands of Middle-Earth.”

In fact, Tolkien first began the story by writing, “In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.”

We wonder what Bilbo, Tolkien’s hero hobbit, would have thought about the earth-bermed, 1400-square-foot, Monolithic Dome home, completed in October 2004, in Flag Pond, Tennessee.

Since its owners are fans of Tolkein and his characters in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, they had the front entrance of their dome designed to resemble Bilbo’s hobbit hole.

^{Updated: December 2010}