# Bag End > *"In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare, sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat: it was a hobbit-hole, and that means comfort."* > > — J.R.R. Tolkien, *The Hobbit* Bag End is a **hobbit-hole** carved into the hillside of **Hobbiton Hill** in Westfarthing, The Shire — and the most famous address in all of Middle-earth. Reached by a winding garden path and marked by a **round green door** with a brass knocker in the very centre, it is simultaneously humble and extraordinary: the starting point of two of the greatest adventures in the history of Arda. ## The Hill and the Hole The smial was dug by **Bungo Baggins**, father of Bilbo, as a wedding gift for his bride **Belladonna Took**. It is a proper gentleman's residence — many rooms, no damp, with deep larders and a pantry that Bilbo kept well-stocked. A path of flat stones leads through a garden famous for its roses and vegetable beds; the windows look out over the Party Field below and, on clear days, toward the Water. The interior is long and low, with curved ceilings and floor-to-ceiling bookshelves. Notable rooms include the **study** (where Bilbo composed poetry and wrote his memoirs), the **dining room** (scene of Gandalf's unexpected party), and the **back passage** — through which Bilbo fled without a pocket-handkerchief in a great hurry one fine morning in April. ## A Legacy of Departures Bag End is defined by its exits as much as its entrances. **Bilbo Baggins**, who inherited the hole and kept it from 2890 to 3001 of the Third Age, departed from it *twice*: once at dawn with thirteen Dwarves and a wizard, bound for Erebor; and again at his eleventy-first birthday party, slipping a gold ring onto his finger before the assembled Shire-folk and vanishing in a flash. **Frodo Baggins**, Bilbo's heir and adopted nephew, left it on the evening of 23 September, T.A. 3018 — bearing the Ring that would consume the next three years of his life. When he returned, he found it let out to Lotho Sackville-Baggins and then seized by Saruman. He restored it, but the Shire, like Frodo himself, would never be entirely the same. ## The Ring's Shadow It was *here*, in the study at Bag End, that Gandalf confirmed his long-held fear: that the small plain ring Bilbo had found in the dark under the Misty Mountains was no trinket, but the **One Ring** — Sauron's instrument of dominion, forged in the fires of Mount Doom. He traced the inscription `One Ring to rule them all…` in the hearth-fire and watched it glow on the ring's surface. That moment, in that quiet room under the hill, set in motion the final chapter of the War of the Ring. ## After the War Frodo returned to Bag End in November T.A. 3019 and lived there until his departure from the Grey Havens in late September T.A. 3021. **Samwise Gamgee** subsequently inherited it, filling its rooms with children and laughter. The *Red Book of Westmarch* — Bilbo's and Frodo's memoir, the source of *The Hobbit* and *The Lord of the Rings* — was written, at least in part, at the desk in the Bag End study. --- *Bag End sits at approximately [−68.8°, 47.0°] on the atlas — northwest Eriador, 10 leagues west of Bree, in the heart of Westfarthing.*