Stock

Type: Hobbit Village
Inhabitants: 55% Stoor, 25% Harfoot, 20% Fallohide
Population: 210
Origin: Settled during Hobbit migrations to the Shire, TA 1601-1610
Purpose: Agriculture

In the days of old Arnor, a peaceful community of Eriadoran farmers and woodcutters had lived between the Green Hills and the west bank of the Baranduin. The Scourging of TA.1409 destroyed these folk and most of the Wood-elves who had dwelt nearby and befriended them. Stock—the name was Westron for a well-tended woodlot—was at the center of the community. The men who still dwelt here later no longer tended all of the groves, vineyards, causeways, and leveed fields of the Marish, but Hobbits were moving into take up the task. The people of Stock traditionally kept good relations with the woodland around them. They harvested trees with care, gathering their boughs for bedding, their apples for drying, and their acorns and walnuts for grinding and baking. The trees grew in rows, probably because there had been, in the old days, an Arthadan knight in residence here. Most of the groves had been planted according to his plan as coppices and orchards.The fertile soil of the Baranduin River valley produced some of the Shire's best mushrooms.

The Stock-folk worried about land-clearing activity. The Bucks and other Hobbit clans had settled all around them , planting fields and setting up mushroom-shelters at the edge of the Marish . Fortunately for the villagers, the Hobbits (asid e from the Oldbucks ) were not good at bullying. Borders set before the Scourging were respected where they could be verified. Hobbits and men alike around Stock were digging into old ruins and family coffers to locate the relevant documents, most moldy with age.Later it became the most prosperous town in the Eastfarthing, the site of the largest trade fairs east of Michel Delving.A Tradesman's Guild based here was the chief organizer of Shire commerce to the east in the first century of the Fourth Age. They kept agents in Bree and Tharbad to hire mercenaries. The best inn in Stock was the Golden Perch frequented by the well-to-do—such as Pippin Took— and the better-bred farmers and tradesmen.

Places of Note:[]

General store
the Crippled Hag Inn
Golden Perch Inn
Healer's House
Mailbox
Mushroom fields
Old Groves
Outfitter - Ernald Boffin
Postman Smallburrow's House
Ruin - known as the Stock Tower, the ruins of an ancient Arthadan Lighthouse
Sharkey's Shipping (formerly known as the Mathom Store)
Stable-master - Gundo Bracegirdle
Trade Fair
Tradesman's Guildhouse

Inhabitants[]

About T.A. 3018/19

Ernald Boffin Ernulf Brandybuck Fogo Fallohide Folco Boffin Gunderic Grubb Gundo Bracegirdle Healer Thistlewool Hob Haywood Mat Harfoot Milo Burrows Pansy Proudfoot Postman Smallburrow Primrose Proudfoot Violet Underhill

References[]

MERP:The Shire
LOTRO:The Shire: Stock