Bree is a fictional village in J. R. R. Tolkien's Middle-earth, east of the Shire. Bree-land, which contains Bree and a few other villages, is the only place where Hobbits and Men lived side by side. It was inspired by the name of the Buckinghamshire village of Brill, meaning "hill-hill", which Tolkien visited regularly in his early years at the University of Oxford, and informed by his passion for linguistics.
Research by a branch of the Tolkien Society suggests that The Bell Inn in Moreton-in-Marsh, with its name above the door, was a source of inspiration for The Prancing Pony.
Frodo meeting Strider in The Prancing Pony. Scraperboard drawing by Alexander Korotich, 1981
"THE PRANCING PONY by BARLIMAN BUTTERBUR" in two different Tengwar modes: the abbreviated tehta of Gondor (above); the full mode (below). If the full mode was what the Hobbits were used to, the text above the door of the inn would have been in that mode, and that would explain why they could not read tehta signs in Gondor.
The name "Bree" was inspired by the name of the village of Brill, Buckinghamshire; it contains the Celtic Breʒ and the Old English hyll, both meaning "hill".
The Shire is a region of J. R. R. Tolkien's fictional Middle-earth, described in The Lord of the Rings and other works. The Shire is an inland area settled exclusively by hobbits, the Shire-folk, largely sheltered from the goings-on in the rest of Middle-earth. It is in the northwest of the continent, in the region of Eriador and the Kingdom of Arnor.
Part of the Shire created for Peter Jackson's films of Middle-earth, on a farm near Matamata, New Zealand
The Four Shire Stone, where four counties of the West of England once met
The name "Bree" was inspired by the name of the village of Brill, Buckinghamshire; it contains the Celtic Breʒ and the Old English hyll, both meaning "hill".
The Bell Inn in Moreton-in-Marsh may have inspired Tolkien to create The Prancing Pony inn at Bree.
