Hobbiton opens the door to Bagshot Row for the first time

Visitors to the famed Hobbiton Movie Set will for the first time be able to venture beyond the doors at Bag End.

Two giant circular entrances nestled into the hillside have been transformed from film façades into fully-fledged Hobbit residences and no detail has been spared.

Tours of the newly fitted Bagshot Row were expected to take The Middle Earth experience to “a whole new level” with authentic hobbit-like touches from the wooden fire, cosy hobbit bedroom décor, bathtub, the kitchen spread and rustic wooden furnishings.

The nine-month long renovation came as the iconic tourist venue was celebrating its 20th year in operation, general manager tourism Shayne Forrest said.

“As of December 1 guests will now have the chance to venture beyond the door and into a hobbit hole for the first time, within the exterior movie set used for the filming of The Lord of the Rings.”

Fans, film fanatics and curious tourists will get to walk floorboards of No 1 Bagshot Row like Frodo, Bilbo and Gandalf, getting a life-like experience of the holes which have been created at 80% human scale.

Previously, a retaining wall was all you would have found behind the doors. “Now the team have created these beautiful interiors so people can get a feeling of what it’s like to venture inside the nice cosy home of a Hobbit.”

Returning to the Hobbiton site was always an invigorating experience for Hamilton-born Lord of the Rings and Hobbit trilogies set director Kathryn Lim.

Many of the skilled and expert fabricators, designers and artists who had worked across Sir Peter Jackson’s trilogies had reunited again to ‘Hobbitise’ the Bagshot Row residence.

“In a film a director decides what gets seen where as [at Bagshot Row] the visitor decides what you see, I think that is pretty cool ... this is going to last forever,” Lim told the Waikato Times.

“Bagshot Row [Hobbit hole number 1] was where The Proudfoot Family, one of the Hobbit families from the Shire lived ... we asked who actually lives here and worked out a good strong narrative.”

The replica site was also a short wander from The Millhouse and the The Green Dragon Inn venues nestled on the 12-acre movie set.

To create the hobbit hole experience, the whole hillside was lifted off and a custom made bunker reaching some 425sqm into the mountain was installed before the lawn and gardens were fitted on top.

Construction began in March this year, Forrest said, and was based on concept drawings made in 2014.

“There’s been three builds happening simultaneously - the excavation and the bunker build out here on the Hobbiton Site.

“We’ve taken over a couple of warehouses in the Matamata township where they built the interior movie set and then down in Wellington the set dressers built and sourced all the furniture.”

If it weren’t for the LOTR trilogies and a spontaneous knock on the door from a set scout all those years ago, life for Hobbiton Movie Set chief executive

Russell Alexander could have been much different. The Alexander farm, originally run by his father Ian Alexander, was now a bustling tourist site, attracting visitors from afar to the Waikato fields.

“Obviously I’ve been here since the movie set inception as the CEO and co-founder, you never get sick of it.

“I’m just absolutely delighted with it, it’s a massive undertaking ... Rome was never built in a day, this [Bagshot Row] was always on the radar for 10 years now and we’ve finally got there.”