The Easterly Inn

In a hole in the ground there lived a Hobbit. Four Hobbits, in fact, with a fifth coming to join them. The Hobbit in question was one Dodinas Brandybuck, formerly of Buckland in the Shire, but now a resident of Wilderland. Above the newly-dug hole there was a newly-built inn, so new it still smelled of sawdust and glue, and the white-washed walls were actually white and not yellowed with pipe-smoke and spilled beer. He lived in the hole with his wife Agatha and his two young sons.

Dodinas – or Dody, as his friends called him (and he had a knack for making friends) – once considered himself to be a well-travelled Hobbit. He had gone as far as Bree, which for most Hobbits constitutes about twice the journey of a  lifetime, and dined out on his tales of strange, exotic folk and unusual customs. On one trip to Bree, in the common-room of the Prancing Pony, he met another Hobbit – the famous (or infamous) Bilbo Baggins.

The two fell to sharing stories, and for once Dody was the one who was flabbergasted and entranced by the other’s stories of distant lands. Compared to Bilbo’s journey There and Back Again, Dody had hardly stepped outside his front door. After several hours and several pints, Bilbo invited Dody to visit him at Bag End for dinner the following Sunday. Dody brought his younger sister Berylla and his wife Agatha along.

The dinner involved several bottles of wine and more tales of Wilderland, as well as innumerable courses. Dodinas declared that he was determined to outdo Bilbo, Dinodas climbed on the table and sang a story about giants, Bilbo enthusiastically showed them his collection of maps and diaries, and Agatha... well, Agatha sipped her wine and thought about practicalities. When Agatha Took married Dody Brandybuck, everyone assumed that the steely young Hobbit-maid would drum some sense into the notoriously eccentric and wild Brandybuck, and ensure that he found a business or craft to occupy his days. However, Agatha was a Took, and there is a latent streak of adventure and wanderlust in that family.

None of them could quite remember how it came to pass – again, a good deal of wine was involved – but a curious plan was formed. Since the successful Quest of Erebor and the defeat of the Dragon, a new era of peace and prosperity had fallen on the North. There was much more traffic on the Forest Road than before, thanks to the watchful eyes of the Beorning-folk and the revived Kingdom of Dale. These travellers and merchants would need somewhere to stay along the road. The plan was that Dodinas and his family would build, open and run an inn on the road between the Old Ford and the Forest Gate – quite close to Beorn’s Hall, where no evil thing dared go. 

Bilbo gave them some money to start the inn, as well as several letters of introduction to various dignitaries and persons of importance he met on his travels. The Brandybucks set off from Buckland a few weeks later, still slightly dazed. They crossed the Misty Mountains without incident, and presented themselves at Beorn’s house. Beorn ignored the letter of introduction, but was amused by the Hobbits’ presumptuousness (the barrel of beer carried from the Golden Perch also helped matters), and gave them leave to build their inn.

The Easterly Inn is situated near a little brook that flows out of Mirkwood towards the Great River, approximately twenty miles south of where the Forest gate opens along the eaves of the wild wood. A small stone bridge arches over the babbling waters, and just beyond that stands the inn. The Easterly Inn (Dindy jokes that it is the eastern-most outpost of the Shire) consists of a small but comfortable wooden inn containing the common room and a few guest rooms for Big Folk, some outbuildings and stables, and the Hobbit-hole beneath where the family lives.

Although it only opened a few months ago, the inn is gaining a reputation as a good stopping point for journeys east of Mirkwood. The beer is good, the food is excellent, and Hobbits make wonderful hosts (even when their homes are invaded by thirteen dwarves and a wizard, as Bilbo proved some years previously). In truth, the success of the inn has less to do with Dody’s beer or even Agatha’s delicious food, and owes more to Beorn’s promise of protection and the curiosity of travellers come to see the strange Halflings. Still, if someone comes to shelter from bandits, and stays for the food and the soft feather beds, that is still gold in Dody’s pocket.