Young Alve Park has been baking cookies each year for a charity for the children of the world. He's fifteen and has been baking since he was five.
It so happens, a cook who made pastry features in a short story by Tolkien. His name is Alf and that's basically the same name as Alve. In the story, the event with the baked cake and a hidden star takes place every 24 years in Wootton Major.
And Wootton is the pronunciation of Wotton, specifically Wotton Underedge, where the oldest school founded by a layman was in all England and that school was founded by a woman and made free to everyone who couldn't otherwise afford.
Katharine Lady Berkeley's School is an academy school near Wotton-under-Edge, Gloucestershire, England, for ages 11 to 18. It has been ranked as the 4th best non-fee paying school in the South-West and 250th best in the whole country.
The school was founded by Katherine, Lady Berkeley for the use of six scholars in 1384 which makes it one of the oldest surviving schools in England.[2] It is known that schools existed in the area before then, but Lady Berkeley formalised this school, gaining it a royal licence and it became a model for other schools. It was founded before Eton, Harrow, and Westminster, and two years after Winchester.[3] The first headteacher appointed in 1384 was John Stone M.A. Oxon[4]
Not only is the school tied to Tolkien via Oxford (where he was a don) or the Middle Ages (his and my favourite period), but also via another detail:
The original foundation deed of the school reads:
"We the said Kitherina (Katherine), attentively considering that the purposes of man desiring to be informed in grammar which is the foundation of all liberal arts, is daily defeated and frustrated by poverty and want of means; therefore for the maintenance and exaltation of Holy Mother Church, and the increase of divine worship, and other liberal arts and sciences, out of the goods bestowed on us by God have procured the said Walter and Williams to acquire certain lands and tenements in fee, that they may build a school-house in Wotton for the habitation and likewise dispose of them for the maintenance of a master and 2 poor scholars of the art of grammar; which master and his successors shall govern and inform all scholars coming to the same house or school coming for instruction in this art without taking anything for his trouble from them or any of them."
The Seal of Katharine Lady Berkeley's School*
The deed was sealed with Lady Katharine's personal seal showing St. John holding a lamb with the Latin inscription "Sigilla domus scolaru de Woton sub egge" meaning "the seal of the school house of Wotton-under-Edge".
So, Tolkien loved grammar, including the grammar part of any language.** His first first name was also precisely John.
I think I have more hints about Tolkien knowing Katherine Lady Berkeley's school than the title of Smith of Wootton Major. You see, Wotton is at its earliest spelled Wudetun. This means "wood town" ... in a certain story he's even better known for, which is also way longer, there is a city of elves which can extremely well be described as a "wood town" ... also in the same story, someone goes by the pseudonym of Underhill for some time. I just called the place Wotton Underedge, but the modern (rather than one historic) spelling is Wotton-under-Edge. So, he saw the historic spelling "Underedge" and liked it, and reused the general idea. It's in the Cotswolds, and it seems that Tolkien enjoyed walking that area:
8 Lord of the Rings and Tolkien Cotswolds sites to visit
Upd. November 9, 2023 / F. Publ. June 21, 2023 by Kirsty Bartholomew
https://lostinlandmarks.com/lord-of-the-rings-and-tolkien-cotswolds-sites/
I'll try to suggest her to add Wotton Underedge to the Cotswold sites. And, should she visit Sweden, to not forget a visit to one or the other of the cookie baking Parks. Alve, or the one with a bakery in Bromma.
Hans Georg Lundahl
Nanterre UL
Holy Three Boys
16.XII.2025
Sanctorum Trium Puerorum, id est Ananiae, Azariae et Misaelis; quorum corpora apud Babyloniam, sub quodam specu, sunt posita.
* The seal is very beautiful, and I tried to share the image here. As it is under Creative commons' licence Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International / CC BY-SA 4.0, I actually DO have the right to share it. Because the owner gave that permission to anyone. Note that the Creative commons' come in different flavours, my own proposal isn't the exact equivalent of any, involves an offer in return for voluntary royalties, and therefore and because it doesn't allow modification cannot be labelled as CC BY-SA 4.0. The image is attributed to Sanctusandrea - Own work, and Sanctusandrea no longer has a profile on Creative Commons. Despite me having the right to upload it, when I tried, I was met with "Sélectionnez uniquement les images pour lesquelles vous disposez des droits d'utilisation" ... I will therefore use the upload in two steps, image to computer and then computer to here:
Ah, worked. Apart from the user being Sanctusandrea, the image was uploaded on 5 Jan. 2024. Here is a link to the whole image and surrounding description: File:Seal of KLB School.jpg
** To the point of actually inventing languages for the pleasure of seeing the working out of a grammar he invented. It seems he even wrote a certain story, much bigger than Smith of Wootton Major in order to insert one of his invented languages or two, or three or ...
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