Cosy dreamworld: Gandalf arrives to visit the hobbits of the Shire in the Lord of the Rings. Photograph: AP/Pierre Vinet
Those who yearn with gooey-eyed nostalgia for platonic golden ages (Greek, Teutonic, Victorian, whatever) are often criticised for idealising a past that never actually existed. Property developer Ron Meyers' latest housing development deals with such carping cynicism head-on - by basing its architecture, landscaped gardens and defiantly agrarian aesthetic not on some fantastical version of the past, but on fantasy itself. Inspired by Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit, Meyers has acquired a strikingly beautiful corner of Oregon, within which he has built his own version of Hobbiton, JRR Tolkien's evergreen rural idyll.
The 31 cottages and town houses, collectively known as The Shire, are set alongside a stream Myer has renamed Brandywine River, and the street names - Rivendel, home of the elves, and Arkenstone, a large, much coveted, precious gem - all recall the best of mythical Middle Earth. Residents are even provided with a Smial - one of the underground bunkers the Hobbits call home - within which to hide the hated but necessary accessories required by modern American life such as flymos, cordless electric tree pruners and gas-powered patio warmers.
The houses themselves, with names such as the Swordsmans Lodge and Butterfly Cottage, are going for $550,000 to $850,000 (£280,000 to £430,000) - complete with feature-gabled roofs with faux-straw thatch made from thin strands of PVC, that the promotional literature boasts "is essentially windproof, rainproof, fireproof and guaranteed not to discolour".
A promotional video, full of blonde, blue-eyed children and golden-haired guitar-playing new-age goddesses, hints at who might live in these weird antediluvian structures. The video, complete with Nordic Gothic script and fire-breathing dragons, is unhappily reminiscent of the sort of propaganda films Reichsfuhrer Heinrich Himmler commissioned when he was promoting a suitably German past and National Socialist future.
All of which serves as a useful reminder of the sort of man JRR Tolkien was. Initially read by environmentally conscious acid-fried hippies, Tolkien was fairly swiftly adopted by all manner of mad, anti-modernist rightwingers. These readers, some of whom will no doubt come to inhabit Meyers' Shire, genuinely believe that things like physics, GM crops and Apple Macs are the equivalent of the evil Lord Saruman knocking down Hobbiton's dulcet watermill and replacing it with his carcinogenic smoke-belching power station.
Still, Prince Charles, who has built his own version of the past in the form of the ghastly Poundbury, is sure to love it. For Charles is not only a huge fan of Tolkien but also of Poundbury designer Leon Krier, who has written a book defending the architecture of Albert Speer. Interesting to know where those piffling opinions come from.
