Down the hobbit hole: inside a miniature Bag End

Lifelong Tolkien fan Maddie Chambers was asked to design and build a toy as part of a college course, and decided to create a miniature Bag End. 'The idea started that I would just make the outside of the little hill with a front door like Bag End. I used to play with and paint Warhammer models and make scenery for the game, so I planned to make a small model hill using my Warhammer scenery equipment,' says Chambers. 'But the idea then spiralled from there and I thought 'well, what if I made the roof removable and had a little room inside?' Then of course I started drawing up plans and adding more rooms till I eventually realised I actually wanted to make a proper replica'
Photograph: Maddie Chambers

'In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit,' Tolkien begins The 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.'
Photograph: Maddie Chambers

'It had a perfectly round door like a porthole, painted green, with a shiny yellow brass knob in the exact middle,' writes Tolkien in The Hobbit. The project took Chambers just under a year; 'I could only work on it a few hours a night while my twin boys slept as I look after them during the day,' she says
Photograph: Maddie Chambers

The hardest thing to create was the actual frame. Tolkien describes Bag End as having curved walls, but Chambers found she couldn't create curved walls and keep the roof removable. 'I had to decide to keep the walls straight and try to create the illusion of curves with the doorways and windows'
Photograph: Maddie Chambers

'The door opened on to a tube-shaped hall like a tunnel: a very comfortable tunnel without smoke, with panelled walls and floors tiled and carpeted, provided with polished chairs, and lots and lots of pegs for hats and coats – the hobbit was fond of visitors.' The orange jacket used to belong to a 'weird-looking doll'; clothing her hobbits is next on Chambers's to-do list
Photograph: Maddie Chambers

Chambers first read The Hobbit as a 10-year-old, and has 'been hooked since then', she says. 'The Lord of the Rings is my favourite book of all time and I believe it always will be. No other book has captured my imagination and drawn me so far into its world.' On the shelf to the rear can be seen a miniature statue of Gandalf riding Shadowfax
Photograph: Maddie Chambers

She had to be 'very inventive' with materials to create the look she wanted. 'I used stones from my back garden to make one of the fireplaces, feathers from my friend's garden for quills, pot pourri for pipe weed and I had to learn how to make miniature food from polymer clay'
Photograph: Maddie Chambers

'The tunnel wound on and on, going fairly but not quite straight into the side of the hill – The Hill, as all the people for many miles round called it – and many little round doors opened out of it, first on one side and then on another'
Photograph: Maddie Chambers

The Hobbit house is now in Chambers's spare room, and she is hoping to sell it to a Tolkien fan who would make good use of it. 'My boys are too young to play with it and I am running out of space to make my new projects,' she says. 'I put so much love into it though, that it would be very hard to see it go.' She's already started her next project, a miniature recreation of The Prancing Pony, an inn the hobbits visit on their journey through Middle-earth. 'I would like to make a series of miniatures from Middle-earth, but I will definitely need to find some more storage space somewhere to fit them,' she says. More images from Bag End can be seen on Chambers's blog, Madshobbithole
Photograph: Maddie Chambers