Battle Pit

Burial ground
Battle Pit
General Information
Location	Westfarthing, The Shire
Type	Burial ground
Description	Sand-pit where nearly seventy Ruffians were buried
People and History
Created	3 November T.A. 3019

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The dead ruffians were laden on waggons and hauled off to an old sand-pit nearby and there buried: in the Battle Pit, as it was afterwards called.

Aftermath of the Battle of Bywater

The Battle Pit was "an old sand-pit" near the town of Bywater in the Shire that was used as the burial place for the Ruffians killed during the Battle of Bywater.

In The Atlas of Middle-earth, Karen Wynn Fonstad speculated that the Battle Pit was located a short distance east of the town.

History

On 3 November T.A. 3019, 100 Ruffians fought against 300 Hobbits on the Bywater Road. The Ruffians had foolishly walked into a trap within a banked portion of the road, which the Hobbits secured with barricades at either end. In the ensuing fight nearly seventy of the Men died. The victorious Hobbits loaded the bodies of their foes into wagons and hauled them to an old, nearby sand-pit for burial, which thereafter was called the Battle Pit. Nineteen Hobbits also died in the fray but they were buried separately, with honor in a hill-side grave above the Battle Pit. Sometime later, "a great stone was" placed over the hill-side grave and a garden grew around it.

Other versions of the legendarium

In an early draft of the chapter "The Scouring of the Shire", the burial place of the Ruffians was originally "an old gravel-pit" that the Hobbits later named the Battle Pits. In this draft, there were no Hobbit casualties.

Inspiration

In relation to the "great stone" it was noted by Patricia Reynolds that while "the setting of memorial stones . . . is a widespread tradition", the garden that grew around the stone recalls a World War I tradition where "many English villages" would plant a "garden of remembrance" around their war-memorials.