Brandy Hall

Brandy Hall was the great ancestral home of the Brandybuck family, the chief hobbit-dwelling of Buckland in the eastern part of the Shire. It was a vast and rambling smial (hobbit-hole) and the seat of the Master of Buckland, the head of the Brandybuck clan.

Description

Brandy Hall was delved into the side of Buck Hill, near the eastern bank of the Brandywine River. Unlike a simple hobbit-hole, it was an enormous warren of interconnecting tunnels, passages, and chambers, with many doors and windows, housing hundreds of Brandybucks and their kin and servants at once. It was one of the three largest hobbit dwellings in the Shire, comparable to the great smials of Tuckborough and the later Bag End.

The Brandybucks of Buckland

The Brandybucks were a numerous, lively, and somewhat unconventional hobbit family who had settled Buckland, the strip of land east of the Brandywine between the river and the Old Forest. Considered a little odd by other hobbits for living so near the wild and for their familiarity with boats and water, the family was led by the Master of Buckland, who dwelt in Brandy Hall.

Meriadoc Brandybuck (Merry), one of the four hobbits who set out from the Shire in the War of the Ring and a companion of Frodo, was the son of the Master of Buckland and grew up at Brandy Hall. Frodo himself, orphaned young, had also been raised there among the Brandybucks before going to live at Bag End with Bilbo.